User Reviews

This is a very strange and incoherent adaptation of the story of Tom Thumb by the Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón. In fact, it is so confusing I didn't really get what was happening at all. There were subtitles included--but unfortunately they are in french! So I really did not get, either way, what the story of this weird film was supposed to be.

In all honesty, the story of Tom Thumb isn't even here at all. It begins with a bunch of children going out for a walk with their parents. The parents then abandon them (doesn't that sound like Hansel and Gretel??!!). However, because Tom Thumb knew their plan, they find their way home. Then, a giant comes out of nowhere and starts ordering the mother around. As for Tom himself--he's normal size! What happens next is even more confusing. The giant starts chasing them because of something Tom did--then he falls asleep and Tom steals his boots. Then there is a shot of Tom FLYING THROUGH THE AIR!!! He reaches home and that's the end.

The whole thing is eleven minutes in all, and it's so strange that I can't find much reason to recommend it to a modern audience. I have no idea where the giant came from, what Tom did to madden him, or how Tom got superhuman powers. It's not a bad watch but is so incomprehensible that there's no real reason to watch it today. Sometime I'm going to have to translate those subtitles so I can understand it a little more.

The summariser and original viewer appears only to have watched a tiny portion of this film and is therefore not surprisingly confused by what it is all about. But as the contemporary review provided by another user makes clear, it is the full story of Tom Thumb (after Charles Perrault), survives more or less in its entirety and is over ten minutes in length (with about half of the film hand-coloured.

To continue the story from where the hapless Amaro seems to have got to, the young Poucet lays a trail of stones so he and his many brothers can get back home, but the poor parents simply take them back again into the woods and this time they are good and lost. Poucet however continues to take the lead and brings the whole gaggle of them to the ogre's castle where, as those who remember their Perrault will know, they are befriended by the ogre's wife and put to bed in a bedroom shared with the ogre's little daughters (although they are in a separate bed)who, by chance, happen to be just as numerous as Poucet and his brothers. The ogre of course intends to eat them eventually.

When the ogre awakes during the night with a whimsical notion of cutting the little boy's heads off, Poucet fools him - ogres are not very bright - by swapping all the nightcaps round, so that, instead of decapitating the boys, the ogre decapitates his own daughters. Which is not very nice, but then Perrault was often quite harsh and children nowadays tend to be told rather pathetic, sanitised versions of these tales.

Anyway, the boys run away and the ogre gives chase, but, rather foolishly, pauses for a nap. Poucet seizes the opportunity to steal his four-league boots (the fairy-tale equivalent of plane-travel) and so leads everyone back home.

He seems however in this version to have forgotten to rob the ogre (or if he does we don't get to see it) so the family risk being as poor as ever....but it is a pretty good telling of the story, the boy playing Poucet is excellent and some of the effects are fun. Altogether, a cracking good yarn and well worth looking out the full version, which is around on Youtube somewhere.

Is this a spoiler? Is it possible to talk about a spoiler where traditional fairy-tales are concerned? Oh well, I'll tick the box in case.