Before Harry Potter and Inkheart, there was the classic fantasy tale of Bastian Balthazar Bux, accompanied by creatures with peculiar names and a book that magically comes to life.
40 years ago, in 1979, German children’s book author Michael Ende (1929-1995) --the author of screen-adapted previous bestsellers MOMO and JIM BUTTON-- brought out The Neverending Story.
The book quickly entered the canon of classic children’s literature.The project's origin story has entered the realm of the mythical, nearly as colourful as the land Fantasia:
Suffering from a bout of writer’s block after his earlier successes, Ende randomly pulled a piece of paper out of a shoe box full of ideas he kept. Years earlier, he had jotted down the story idea that went “boy literally falls into story while reading, having trouble finding his way out.” Each night, he wrote out the story, having his wife, actor Ingeborg Hoffmann, read the passages back to him during the day. The book seemed to (magically) write itself: He had aimed for 100 pages but ended up with 500, after many a missed deadline and hundreds of more pages he wrote but scrapped. The legend goes that reprints were delayed because the printer ran out of paper due to the unforeseen demand.
Over the decades,
the story went on to inspire rock albums, spin-off book series, musical, opera and ballet versions. Google created a beautiful (if oddly timed)
doodle in 2016, for the book’s 37th anniversary; not to mention merchandise from T-shirts to phone covers. Canada’s Nelvana produced an animated show and Montreal’s Muse Entertainment a TV series in the 1990s.
In its 2019 season, Canada’s Stratford Festival is putting the tale-within-a-tale about Bastian trying to save Fantasia from “The Nothing” onto their Avon Theatre stage.
And then there were three feature film adaptations of which the first is worth revisiting. And when you do, know that, while Fantasia of course is an imaginary realm mostly brought to life at Munich's Bavaria Studios, the scenes of Bastian at his place and in the bookstore were shot in Gastown in downtown Vancouver.
In 1984, director Wolfgang Petersen (TROY; AIR FORCE ONE) released that first feature film adaptation of the complex novel's first half, stopping right before Bastian enters the book and thus cutting the book’s meta-level. Anyone alive in the 1980s can likely still sing along to the mulleted Kajagoogoo frontman
Limahl’s ethereal title song, composed by Giorgio Moroder. Ende had co-written the script, but it was heavily changed during production to please American funders (and likely, American audience tastes).
Author Michael Ende, son of a surrealist artist father, vocally despised the divergent film after he had been persuaded by producer Bernd Eichinger (CHRISTIANE F.; THE DOWNFALL) to participate. He held a press conference, calling the production result "that revolting movie...a gigantic melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic...The makers of the film simply did not understand the book at all. They just wanted to make money.” Even
People Magazine picked up the story.
Ende unsuccessfully tried to stop the production or at least have the title changed, as he felt that the clever intricacies of his work —each chapter beginning with a succeeding letter of the alphabet; colour-coded narratives; illustrator Roswitha Quadflieg’s famous Book of Kells-like design— were too dumbed down for the screen (Spielberg helped edit the US theatrical version), despite a production budget of about U$26m, which made it the most expensive German film at the time, upstaging Petersen’s own DAS BOOT. There were more scandals. Petersen cast then 13-year old child star Noah Hathaway (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) as the boy warrior Atréju on a 3-month contract that turned into a 10-month shoot. Hathaway’s people successfully sued for unpaid wages, but he was uninvited from the premiere.
None of this kept critics from reviewing the film mostly favourably nor audiences from breaking box office records and watching the film to this day.
There are not many German cult classics from the past three decades -- The Neverending Story is one. Roger Ebert praised some of the most inventive visual effects of that time that created "an entirely new world” (although VFX capabilities were not advanced enough to realize all scenes as planned). CinemaBlend referred to it as "One of a scant few true fantasy masterpieces”.
To be continued: Ende’s magical work continues to be jinxed. Earlier this year, a rights war over film and merchandise rights was rekindled.
by
@JuttaBrendemuhl
images: German Bluray cover, Constantin Film; uncredited production shot at filmstarts.de
