The Blue Bird

The first official co-production between the United States and the Soviet Union, The Blue Bird was the third screen adaptation of the children's story by Maurice Maeterlinck about a pair of children, Tyltyl (Todd Lookinland) and Mytyl (Patsy Kensit), who leave home to search for the Blue Bird of ...more

The Blue Bird has never translated particularly well to the screen, but the only excuse for the 1976 being so bad is that the demands of the first U.S.-U.S.S.R. production were simply too overwhelming. Yet the screenplay had been written before production began, so theoretically someone -- ideally director George Cukor- should have realized in advance that this fey, annoying, cloying and bizarre film as destined for failure. However, the stilted dialogue and didactic nature of the script don't ...more