OVP: The Little Prince (1974)

Film: The Little Prince (1974)

Stars: Steven Warner, Richard Kiley, Bob Fosse, Gene Wilder, Donna McKechnie

Director: Stanley Donen

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Best Original Song-"Little Prince")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We continue on with our week devoted to music & the Oscars with a story I somehow didn't know.  I'd heard of the famous children's story The Little Prince by Count Antoine de Saint-Exupery, as it's obviously well-known and has been remade many times, but I'd never seen it done & didn't know the plot (which was much more modern than I expected upon actually viewing the film).  This production, possibly the most famous version of the story committed to screen, was in an era where screen musicals were basically dead, or at least this style of them had completely gone out-of-fashion, other than in children's movies like Bedknobs and Broomsticks or Tom Sawyer.  I generally like mid-1970's musicals because they're so earnest (and not trying to be edgy at all), so I was curious what this one would be like-would it join other splendid children's classics or be horribly dated?

(Spoilers Ahead) The story, for those unfamiliar is of a Pilot (Kiley) who must make a landing in the middle of the Sahara Desert.  There he meets a young boy, the Little Prince (Warner), who has fallen from a nearby asteroid.  The Little Prince does not understand adults, and how they have such peculiar & jaded ways of looking at the world, but when he lands on Earth he learns several life lessons from a Fox (Wilder) and a Snake (Fosse), life lessons that he teaches the Pilot while he fixes his plane.  The Pilot tries to keep the Little Prince alive as his stories end & the plane is fixed, but to no avail-the Little Prince dies, and the Pilot eventually comes to realize that the Little Prince never existed, and if he has, he has returned to the stars.  The Pilot moves on from the experience, forever changed by the young apparition.

The story is quite silly initially, and a bit confusing.  We are meant to understand that the Pilot doesn't relate well to other adults, and had many of his childhood dreams crushed (he strived to be an artist, but was mocked for his work so he gave it up), and the film easily could've been horribly dated, as cinematic children of the 1970's always sound either like Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time or Dennis the Menace (and right off the bat the Little Prince is more in the former camp).

But then after a while something happens-The Little Prince ends up being kind of magical.  The two leads have a fascinating rapport, with the Little Prince sharing life lessons from the Snake & Fox that the Pilot had never put together, about responsibility & how people become special & unique when we decide to love them.  As a result, while the film is made on a shoestring budget & is occasionally a tad ridiculous, it's also strangely beautiful, and you'll cry when it's over.

This is apparent based on the movie's two Oscar nominations.  The score is filled with fun songs, but none better than the title tune.  I have a serious soft spot for Richard Kiley (that baritone-my god), and so him singing this beautiful, haunting ode to his dying friend (a goodbye, but also a debt of gratitude for giving him a fresh appreciation for his life) is chilling.  I loved the song, and I really enjoyed the movie.  I don't know if this is the kind of film that I'd recommend to everyone else (this might be a "right mood, right time" situation that occasionally happens), but The Little Prince is a tale I won't soon be forgetting.