The Blue Bird (1940 film)

The Blue Bird is a 1940 BampW 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 Foxs answer to MGMs 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.

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 Mytyls 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 yettobe 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 blackandwhite scenes and the war subplot were invented for the film. Mytyls selfishness, the basic trait of her personality, was a plot thread specifically written into the motion picture. It is not in the original play. ........

Source: Wikipedia