Gransel & Hetel (1958)

D. Jago Mirelles
B&W

Much like ‘The Third Man’, a film in which Orson Welles only really makes a brief appearance, but which looks from every lop-sided camera-shot and stark black and white image like your actual Orson Welles movie; this is another film in which Welles does little more than cameo, but which seems like Orson Welles directing at his most menacing. Of course ‘Gransel & Hetel’ is a lot more obscure and nowhere near as good as ‘The Third Man’ (that’s fine though, it’s hardly a badge of shame to be less good than ‘The Third Man’), but one which in its Grimm Brothers gothic stands out as being possibly the most Welles films the great Orson never directed.

A boy named Gransel and a girl named Hetel wander too far into the woods one day where they meet a wicked witch who makes no secret of the fact she’d like to eat them. Actually this is one damned scary witch. Imagine the bleached face of a worm with the razor-like teeth of a tiger shark, then picture that looming out of black & white darkness and we have here the kind of evil queen Alvy Singer is never ever going to fall in love with. The plucky kids make their escape, but are trapped in the increasingly dark wood with their would-be devourer in pursuit. A terrified elf tells them that the only way they can save themselves is to head to the ogre’s castle at the centre of the woods.

The ogre is, of course, Orson Welles, shot constantly from low angles to make him look twice as big and three times as menacing. He looms into frame, dominates it, his big and bushy beard seems to jut right out of the screen, he laughs twice as loud as any other sound in the film. Of course this opens up a lot of fat jokes at poor Orson’s expense (he after all looks more likely to eat the kids than the scrawny witch), but I’m going to (mostly) rise above that and just say how great his performance is: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ played not as a kindly charlatan, but as a malevolent and changeable monster who can help you on a whim, but easily destroy you too.

(It amuses me to do this film right next to Peter Sellers in ‘Mr Hargreaves’, as part of the reason production on the original ‘Casino Royale’ went so badly awry was the spectacular falling out between the two men. In these films each seems to be playing versions of their public personas. Sellers is outwardly affable and witty, but underneath something distinctly more unpleasant; while Welles is a quixotic, occasionally charming, walking appetite. If I had to pick, I think I’d rather have an evening out with Orson.)

Like an earlier, less well-formed ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, this is a movie which takes European fairy tales and decides not to downplay the horror elements Disney-style, but instead ramp them up so each of the ogres, witches and fairies is screaming at you. What we have is an Orson Welles’s children’s film – one that’s a compendium of creepy old books, scary backdrops, horrible monsters with horrible appetites, and a sense of doom that doesn’t really let up.