FairyTale: A True Story

1917. Frances has lost her mother and her father is at the front; she moves in with her aunt at Cottingley. She plays with her cousin Elsie by the beck at the bottom of the garden. One day they take her father's camera. In the picture they make there is one of the girls and small winged figures dancing in front of her. The photograph leaves the family. It reaches a magazine. Then the country's best known writer takes up the matter. Arthur Conan Doyle lost his son in the war and wants to believe there is something after death. Harry Houdini comes too; he is a man who made a trade of tricks, and he looks at the photograph. Charles Sturridge directs. Florence Hoath plays Frances and Elizabeth Earl plays Elsie; Peter O'Toole is Conan Doyle and Harvey Keitel is Houdini. It is a British and American production. The ground is real; the photographs known as the Cottingley fairies were taken in 1917 and argued over for years. The two girls explained how the pictures had actually been made only much later, in old age. The matter it treats is the wish to believe; the war left a generation in mourning and the narrative says so directly. The film looks aimed at children but there is a story of grief behind it. Another British film about the Cottingley affair was made the same year. The narrative takes no clear side on whether the photographs are real and leaves the viewer to decide. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the child acting uneven, and the effects dated. Who it is for: viewers who like period films and family productions drawn from real events. Who it is not for: it is slow, the emotional dose high, and the ending unresolved.