Schneewittchen und das Geheimnis der Zwerge (1992)

Snow White’s father, the king, goes to war as a crusader. Snow White, who often plays with the court jester Andreas, remains in the castle with her veiled stepmother and the jester. The king asks Andreas to speak with him in private, during which it becomes clear that Andreas is a prince. The king wants to release him from his role as jester, but Andreas wants to remain a jester and stay by the side of the unprotected Snow White. As soon as the king has left the country, the stepmother shows her true face. Her veils fall away, revealing her beauty and her abundant red hair, and feasts and tournaments are held. The queen cannot stand Snow White, whom she always calls “Snowitt” in a pointed, spiteful way. The queen confides to the jester that she no longer wants Snow White in her sight. The princess is no longer to receive a courtly education. The gorge in Bear Ravine is chosen as a place to camp in the wilderness, and the jester accompanies Snow White there. Meanwhile, far from the kingdom, dwarfs are developing scientific inventions. They have a gift for the king: a mirror that tells the truth. So that they will not have to appear at court as dwarfs, they have designed a knight in black armor who can walk and ride by means of mechanics. They send him to the castle with the dwarfs’ invention. The knight finds only the queen there, but she insists on receiving the gift as the ruler. He explains that once a week the sovereign can ask the mirror a question about the truth. She asks it, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest in the land?” The queen becomes addicted to the mirror’s affirmation, which tells her, “My queen, you are the fairest in the land.” The knight, too, is drawn into its spell. Instead of returning at once to the dwarfs’ realm as they ordered, the mysterious figure takes pleasure in winning tournaments in honor of the evil queen. When the jester Andreas appears at the queen’s court, she recognizes from his lovestruck eyes and kissed lips that Snow White’s beauty is growing. At last, the mirror confirms that Snow White is fairer than she is. In the forest of Bear Ravine, Snow White learns many things from the jester, including how to distinguish birdsong and how to make pancakes. Snow White is thoughtful: the comforts her stepmother has provided give her good reason to be suspicious. But she is also keenly perceptive in other ways: Snow White recognizes Andreas’s decidedly un-jester-like dignity and energy. While playing blind man’s buff, the two realize they are in love, and a magical kiss seals it. When the queen learns of Snow White’s beauty, she sends the Black Knight to Bear Ravine to kill the heir to the throne. The knight reaches the tent camp, knocks Andreas unconscious, abducts the princess, and intends to kill her in the forest. But the enigmatic knight is part human and part machine. When Snow White begs him, he takes pity on her, lets her run away, and returns to the queen with game he has hunted. There, the knight tries to tamper with the mirror. Mechanically, it says, “My queen, you are the fairest in the land.” But the queen catches him tinkering with it. After a long journey through the wilderness, Snow White reaches the dwarfs’ house. The dwarfs are not home, and she does not know who owns the place. She enters the house, where everything works by mechanics. Making pancakes, she leaves a great mess. Shortly afterward, she finally falls asleep. The dwarfs are astonished to find Snow White asleep there that evening. They let her stay with them. From the dwarfs, Snow White learns the story of her true mother—and the story of the snow, blood, and ebony wonder of her birth. The dwarfs warn her about her stepmother. But the dwarfs’ rigid insistence on truth invites contradiction. Snow White is to learn how to guard against her enemy using a mechanical doll made by the dwarfs, an artificial likeness of the evil queen. The queen learns from the mirror that Snow White is alive and staying with the seven dwarfs. So she sets off for the dwarfs’ land disguised as a Chinese merchant, carrying a poisoned bodice. Andreas finds the Black Knight in a broken-down state, and the knight collapses. Andreas helps the dwarf out of the armor. Having denied his own form, the eighth dwarf had enjoyed success at court as the Black Knight. Repentant, he sets out with Andreas to save Snow White from the queen’s murderous intentions. After the attack, the dwarfs save Snow White, foiling the attempt on her life. When the queen learns from the mirror that Snow White has been rescued, she sets off to find her with a poisoned apple. As Andreas and the eighth dwarf travel through an underground passage, it collapses and buries the eighth dwarf, but Andreas continues alone. By the time he reaches the dwarfs, Snow White has already been poisoned and is lying in a glass coffin. Andreas keeps watch in mourning. When he tries to touch Snow White one last time, he pulls her out of the glass, causing her to spit out the poisonous piece of apple and come back to life. They joyfully fall into each other’s arms. Meanwhile, the queen has positioned herself before her mirror again. Horrified, she sees the Black Knight’s mechanical parts scattered on the floor. She smashes the talking mirror-sun, causing her hair to burn and turn to ash. A priest takes her to a remote convent. Andreas and Snow White say goodbye to the dwarfs. The truth did not lie in a single, unequivocal reflection. This realization leads the dwarfs to recognize the dogmatic flaw in the mirror they constructed: truth lies within oneself and in living together with others. In this spirit, the prince can play one last jester’s trick with his puppet-mirror image, constructed by the dwarfs. Adorned with the dwarfs’ blood-red carbuncles, Snow White and Andreas sail along the mirror-smooth river, accompanied by the king who has returned, toward the truth of their happiness.