Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck

Plot synopsis:
An old artisan in a Middle Eastern town finds himself the brunt of abuse from the townspeople, due to his hunch-back. The children, who call him wicked, chase him and corner him in his shop. He locks them in and tells them they can only leave once they have listened to his story. It turns out the old man used to be called Little Muck in his youth. As a boy, Muck is kind and benevolent, despite being discriminated against by everyone.
When his caring father dies, his greedy relatives ransack his house and threaten Muck. Muck escapes and sets out in search of a merchant who can supposedly sell happiness. He wanders across the desert, only to find the house of a wicked woman who traps him. Before escaping he takes her magical boots and staff. These boots allow Muck to run faster than anyone else in the land.
He immediately seeks out the Sultan, and with the help of his boots, he becomes the Sultan's chief runner, delivering messages. His staff also has the power to find buried treasure. His employment with the Sultan leads to the youth encountering some ethical problems. Eventually, he is framed for thievery and thrown out. Despite these circumstances, Muck returns and helps his virtuous friend, Hassan, win the heart of the lovely Princess Amarza.
Once Muck has finished his retrospective, the children display a newfound respect for him, and they help him with his work.

Tags: psychedelic, fantasy

Review:
A once popular children's film that has not aged well.. The Story of Little Mook is an East German fantasy movie from the 1950s. It tells the story of a little hunchback boy who has a series of magical adventures as he seeks to find his fortune after his father's death. The sets and the color cinematography are very nice, bit those are about the only positive things I can say about the movie. To be fair, the version I saw had the most egregious dubbing which may have made the movie seem worse than it really was. But the story seemed simplistic and dull while the comedy was overly broad.Even though it was made behind the Iron Curtain, it was exported all over the world, and according to the East German Cinema Blog, it was East Germany's highest grossing film. But it's hard to imagine any child sitting still for it now.. All decent, except the most important aspect. "Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck" or "Der kleine Muck" or "The Story of Little Mook" is an East German 100-minute movie from 1953. The director is Wolfgang Staudte and the writer is Peter Podehl and both were really successful in their respective fields, even if only Staudte (if at all) is much more than the script writer here going by today's popularity. Podehl mostly worked on children-oriented works while Staudte also made more "serious" films. But this fact also shows you that this movie here is much more than just a watch for kids. The writer of the original fairy tale is Wilhelm Hauff and if you heard his name before, you may know that his tales are frequently much darker and also much more violent than the works of Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm for example. he also wrote "Das kalte Herz", which has been adapted into film many times.But back to this one here. I already wrote in the title that I felt this is a somewhat decent achievement. And this especially refers to the visual side. The costumes and sets are all really well done and don't need to be shy of a comparison with Hollywood. This film looks much newer than early 50s and it is difficult to believe from the looks of it that this one is already easily over 60 years old. One reason for that may be the bright colors given the fact that there are still German black-and-white films from 20 years or more later, such as Schlöndorff's "Der Fangschuß". The acting in the little Muck movie is okay too, but the one big problem I had here were the characters and the story. It was really difficult to care for any of them I must say and for their actions. Yes you should not take everything seriously (or anything?) in films from the fantasy genre, but still I need at least some credibly dramatic substance and I was missing it here. Quite a shame the film ended up this underwhelming with regards to the plot as all the other aspects I mentioned were convincing and the sound track that I have not yet mentioned was good too. "Der kleine Muck" is one of these German films where everybody has heard the title here in Germany, but hardly anybody knows the story. Maybe the reason is that Hauff's story just isn't good enough to have people care about it as much as they do about other fairy tales. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.