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''The Blue Bird'' is a 1940 B&W and Technicolor American fantasy film directed by Walter Lang. The screenplay by Walter Bullock was adapted from the 1908 play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. Intended as 20th Century Fox's answer to MGM's ''The Wizard of Oz'', which had been released the previous year, it was filmed in Technicolor and tells the story of a disagreeable little girl (played by Shirley Temple) and her search for happiness. Despite being a box office flop and losing money, the film was later nominated for two Academy Awards. It is available on both VHS and DVD. ==Plot== Set in Germany sometime in the late 18th century where Mytyl (Shirley Temple), the bratty daughter of a woodcutter (Russell Hicks), finds a unique bird in the Royal Forest and selfishly refuses to give it to her sick friend. Mother and Father are mortified at Mytyl's behavior. That evening, Father is called on to report for duty the next morning in an unspecified war. That same night, Mytyl is visited in a dream by a fairy named Berylune (Jessie Ralph) who sends her and her brother Tyltyl (Johnny Russell) to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. To accompany them, the fairy magically transforms their dog Tylo (Eddie Collins), cat Tylette (Gale Sondergaard), and lantern ("Light") into human form. The children have a number of adventures, visiting the past and their dead grandparents who come to life because they are being remembered, a scary adventure in the forest, the life of luxury, and the future, a land of yet-to-be born children. The dream journey makes Mytyl awake as a kinder and gentler girl who has learned to appreciate all the comforts and joys of her home and family. In the morning, the Father receives word that a truce has been called and he does not have to go to war. The film, although following the basic plot of the stage version, highly embellishes it, and does not literally use the original dialogue. The opening black-and-white scenes and the war subplot were invented for the film. Mytyl's selfishness, the basic trait of her personality, was a plot thread specifically written into the motion picture. It is not in the original play. The play begins with the children already asleep and the dream about to begin. There is absolutely no depiction of the family's daily life, as there is in the 1940 film. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Blue Bird (1940 film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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