The Terribly Sad Princess

Borivoj Zeman's 1968 Czech film is a fairy tale musical. Two kings decide to marry off their children to prevent a war, but neither the prince nor the princess wants to marry a stranger, and both disguise themselves and run. The idea is to break the order of meeting. The prince and princess come to know and love each other without knowing who the other is; the arrangement the families made is thereby both destroyed and arrived at anyway. The humour rests on that irony. Helena Vondrackova and Vaclav Neckar lead and both were popular singers of the period; the songs stayed familiar in Czechoslovakia for years. The sets and use of colour are deliberately close to stage design. Who it's for: those who like Eastern European fairy tale films and family musicals. Who it's not for: viewers looking for realist narrative; the film runs on fairy tale logic throughout.