View source for Review:FairyTale: A True Story/Michael W. Homer

{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles
 |Date=1998-01-01
 |Book=FairyTale: A True Story
 |BookAuthor=Ernie Contreras
 |Reviewer=Michael W. Homer
 |Topics=Movie
}}
This review of the movie ''"FairyTale: A True Story", by Ernie Contreras'' was written by [[Michael W. Homer]] and published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 8, 1998).

This review discusses [[FairyTale: A True Story]] as a sympathetic but historically inaccurate film about the Cottingley Fairy episode and [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s role in it. It argues that, despite major liberties with chronology and characters, the movie usefully explores belief, illusion, grief, and [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s Spiritualism in a non-judgmental way.


== Review ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1998-vol8-p112-review-homer.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 8, 1998, p. 112)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1998-vol8-p113-review-homer.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 8, 1998, p. 113)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1998-vol8-p114-review-homer.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 8, 1998, p. 114)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1998-vol8-p115-review-homer.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 8, 1998, p. 115)]]

: [[File:1997-fairytale-a-true-story-poster2.jpg|200px]]
: '''FairyTale: A True Story'''


'''Reviewed by Michael W. Homer'''

The Cottingley Fairy photographs have had a lasting negative impact on [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s reputation. Those who wonder how the author of the [[Sherlock Holmes]] adventures could have embraced Spiritualism are even more perplexed by his belief in the veracity of the famous fairy photographs. The film [[FairyTale: A True Story]] places [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s participation in this episode in a new perspective which is respectful of his beliefs but which also attempts to tell the story of those who did not believe in the photographs. 

[[FairyTale: A True Story]] was released in North America on 24 October 1997. It tells the story of the Cottingley Fairy photographs incident chronicled by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Edward L. Gardner. Both men are portrayed in the movie. While this version of the Cottingley Fairies episode is a wonderful fairy tale, the movie is not the true story it claims to be (at least not totally true). Liberties are taken with the 'true story' to dramatize the events surrounding the Cottingley Fairies. Ironically, the fictional events dramatized in the film illuminate the most intriguing themes of the real episode. The most obvious parts of the movie which are not true are its condensed chronology, the inclusion of Harry Houdini as a principal participant in the events portrayed, and the reference to Joseph Wright, who is not mentioned in any of the historical accounts but who, in the movie, died prior to the events chronicled in the movie and became a symbol for the death and devastation of the Great War. 

According to the promotional material for the movie (see [https://web.archive.org/web/19980523234510/http://www.fairytalemovie.com/prodnotes.html http://www.fairytalemovie.com/prodnotes.html]), the story took place in 1917. While it is true that the first two fairy photographs were taken in July and September 1917 by Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths, the next three photographs were not taken until three years later in August 1920. Other photographs were also attempted but discarded as partial failures. [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] first heard of the initial photographs in May 1920 and made arrangements for the taking of subsequent photographs (but neither he nor Edward Gardner were there when they were taken, as depicted in the movie). [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s first [[The Strand Magazine|Strand]] [[Fairies Photographed|article]] (which included the first two photographs) was published in December 1920, and a second [[The Evidence for Fairies|article]] (which included the subsequent three photographs but which is not referenced in the movie) was published in March 1921. The book, [[The Coming of the Fairies]], was not published until 1922. In the film we experience these events as if they occurred one after the other in rapid sequence. Obviously, the compressed chronology allows for a more convenient and engaging telling of a fairy tale in a way that adds drama to events which occurred over more than a five year period. 

Fairy Tale opens with a magic show at the Hippodrome attended by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] and his children. Following the programme, [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] gushed that if he had not seen Houdini's escape with his own eyes he would not have believed it. Houdini replied, 'Do you believe everything you see?' Then Houdini looked to [[Lena Annette Jean Conan Doyle|Jean]] ([[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s young daughter) and said, 'Children expect nothing and so they see everything. With this dramatic opening, Houdini is introduced into the events surrounding the Cottingley Fairy photographs. The inclusion of Harry Houdini as a sceptic and foil for true believer [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] is an ingenious tool to introduce the paradigm between belief and knowledge. (Houdini and [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] have also been linked in other recent fiction: Bethancourt's ''The Tomorrow Connection'' (1984); Hjortsberg's ''Nevermore'' (1994); and, most recently, Satterthwaite's ''Escapade'' (1995).) As a magician, Houdini asks us to question what is real, or assumed to be true. 

The underlying theme of the movie is whether two young girls. had actually seen and photographed fairies living in a garden in Cottingley, Yorkshire, or if they were capable of creating and perpetuating a hoax. A more subtle and secondary theme suggested in the film is whether fairies exist. [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], a materialist who shortly before the appearance of the Cottingley Fairies had converted to Spiritualism, was convinced that the girls were too innocent to perpetuate a hoax and that their innocence allowed them to see fairies when others could not. Harry Houdini (who in real life probably did not consider the episode important or serious enough for him to make comment, even though [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] sent him a letter making specific reference to them) provides the perspective of a materialist in the movie. Houdini, the master of illusion, maintained that empirical evidence is not always sufficient to prove the existence of the supernatural. After all, Houdini was a medium before becoming a conjurer and realized that even empirical evidence can be produced by 'tricks'. 

The movie does not suggest that the girls produced the hoax for malevolent purposes. On the contrary, part of the 'fiction' which has been introduced into the movie enables the movie makers to present a multi-layered narrative which presents a complex story. On one level [[FairyTale: A True Story|FairyTale]] is a simple children's fairy tale replete with fairies, children with nets in the beck attempting to catch a glimpse of fairies, the performance of Peter Pan at the Duke of York theatre in London, and Houdini performing magic tricks at the Hippodrome. But the story is also for adults. Mrs Wright is a bereaved mother. Although she did not initially believe that her daughter and niece had seen fairies, she soon finds comfort in the fairy photographs which 'prove' the existence of 'spirits of the air'. 

The movie suggests that Frances and Elsie created a false proof (utilizing cardboard cut-outs) for the existence of 'real' fairies which they had seen (or at least they believed really existed), but which refused to be photographed. Both Houdini and a Yorkshire reporter discovered evidence which suggested that the fairy photographs were staged with props. (In the movie the Wrights refuse to speak with the reporter — in real life they all (Mr and Mrs Wright as well as Elsie) 'answered my questions quite frankly'.) During one episode in the movie, Elsie asked Houdini if he would ever reveal how he performed one of his tricks. He said he would never do so. 'No one wants to know,' he said. His response gave comfort to the girl, who realized that the illusion she and her cousin had produced provided comfort to her bereaved mother and to others such as [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Edward Gardner. The 'trick' utilized in making the photographs was no different than tricks used by magicians and illusionists which provided pleasure for their audiences. The girls (in the movie) instinctively knew that this story would not be believed unless supported by empirical data. The romantic notion of intuitive belief had become subservient to a more classical view that requires. an analytical and rational explanation for the supernatural. Ironically, Houdini, a master of illusion, is the empiricist even though he asked his audiences to suspend reality to believe an illusion. But he also never claimed to be assisted by spirits: 'It was a trick — but I hope a very good one." 

It is important that the photographers of the fairies were children. Little girls were perceived as less likely to lie or deceive. Their innocence allowed them to believe and perhaps to see what adults 'know' does not exist, while the movie advances the notion that 'grownups don't know how to believe'. In the movie, even Houdini refuses to challenge Elsie and Frances. The master illusionist is depicted as one who is very critical of mediums and, in particular, those who seek to profit from fraud. At the end of the movie Houdini is asked by the press, in the presence of the girls, whether he believed in the photographs. He simply said that he had spent much of his life making the impossible true and wondered why he should be against this in others. 'I stand against fraud. ... I see none of that here.' When Elsie's mother had been asked the same question by [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] she responded by saying, 'Yes, with all my heart.' 

Despite the liberties taken by the film makers with the 'real history' of the Cottingley Fairy photographs, the film does illuminate an interesting episode in the career of [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]. The Cottingley Fairy episode has always been particularly distressing to those who fail to understand [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s fascination with spirits and the paranormal. The movie places his beliefs, and his actions in advancing his beliefs, in a very non-judgmental context which accepts the possibility that, even if the photographs were ultimately shown to be fakes, the existence of spirits and fairies is still subject to belief. 

Michael W. Homer 








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