#its morozko btw

[cuteteacakes]

So I looked up what a character in the book I'm reading looks like and.....

Like he's described as having a shaven face to make him look young and yet eyes that seem like they're elderly but HE'S DEFINITELYA LOOKER

[fairytaleslive]

Hello! thank you for your answer about SnowWhite and SleepingBeauty. A russian version of SleepingBeauty is in Morozko: the main character has a sleeping beauty arc when she fall asleep near the end of the story. I don't know if this part of Morozko is based on Russian folklore or not. Do you know more? In Czech adaptation, the Pricess pricks her finger on a rose and not on the spindle of a spinning wheel. Why this choice? is it based on Bozena Nemcova version of the tale?

Hi again, thank you for your question.

MOROZKO

You are right, in Morozko, the heroine falls into "eternal" sleep, though it's not a curse (she is tricked into touching Father Frost's magic staff) and she is awaken by the hero's love (represented by a tear), not a kiss.

Morozko ("Father Frost", 1964) is kind of special movie – as far as I know, it's not a direct adaptation of one fairytale, more like a combination of several fairytale themes into a one original screenplay. Its basis is a fairytale Father Frost about two sisters: one is kind and polite when she encounters Father Frost and he rewards her, the other is mean and rude to him and she is punished. (like in Diamonds and Toads, Frau Holle or in The Twelve Months) In Morozko/Father Frost movie, the writers added various other motifs to make the story more interesting/adventurous: there is brave Ivan who is punished for his pride and has to redeem himself, Baba Yaga, band of robbers and a playful dwarf "Starichok-Borovichok".

So to answer your question, in my opinion the writers of Morozko were not necessarily inspired by Sleeping Beauty when they added the “eternal sleep” motif. They simply needed a device to make the climax of the movie more suspenseful and to demonstrate the hero’s character improvement.

(if there are any Russian followers, feel free to correct me/add your views; personally, I’ve never encountered “eternal sleep” theme in Russian fairytales I’ve read, but my knowledge is limited)

pictured: Natalya Sedykh as Nastenka in Morozko/Father Frost (1964)

And to be fair, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are not the only fairytales that feature a sleeping heroine. See for instance fairytales such as Water of Life or The King of England and his Three Sons. (Btw, the Water of Life has been recently adapted as a part of 6 auf einen Streich series and it's a lovely film! You can watch it here.)

SLEEPING BEAUTY

No, Sleeping Beauty pricking her finger on a rose thorn is not from Božena Němcová’s retelling, simply because Němcová never collected this tale :).I think the story, as we know it in the Czech Republic, has mostly come here from the Brothers Grimm’s version (which is heavily based on Perrault’s version), which is called “Briar Rose” (Dornröschen). I didn’t manage to find a written fairytale variant which would explicitly state the thorn being the cause of the curse.

I am thinking that maaaybe the person who changed it from the spinning wheel to a rose thorn was the screenwriter of How to Wake a Sleeping Beauty (1977), Bohumila Zelenková, and later Czech adaptations simply copied it from this movie. But that’s just my thought, I will definitely keep the matter of origin of the rose thorn in mind and write a post about it if I manage to find a source of this idea in the future!