Maurice Maeterlinck's 1908 play The Blue Bird (L'Oiseau Bleu) has been adapted numerous times for film and television:
The Blue Bird is a 1910 silent film, based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck and starring Pauline Gilmer as Mytyl and Olive Walter as Tytyl. It was filmed in England.
The Blue Bird is a 1918 film directed by Maurice Tourneur in the United States, under the auspices of producer Adolph Zukor. The story begins with two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, whom are sent out by the fairy Bérylune into various lands to search for the bluebird of happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their home the whole time. Tyltyl later gives the bird as a present to a sick neighbor. However, the bird flies away and never returns. The moral is that happiness comes more from the journey than the reward and that happiness is fleeting.
In 2004, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
The Blue Bird is a 1940 film starring Shirley Temple., based on a classic play by Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck. Intended as Twentieth Century-Fox's answer to The Wizard of Oz, which had been released the previous year, it was filmed in Technicolor and directed by Walter Lang. The film failed at the box office, but has found a cult following among Temple fans since its television airings of the 1960s and 70s and its reissue on video.
The Blue Bird is a 1976 children's film directed by George Cukor, with a screenplay by Hugh Whitemore based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck. The film was a Soviet-American coproduction, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Cicely Tyson, James Coco, Patsy Kensit, and Ava Gardner. There were certain on-set problems, partly because this was the first joint production between an American studio (20th Century Fox) and a Soviet one (Lenfilm). Language and cultural problems, along with on-set politics, delayed the filming process. The film was awarded the Honorary Diploma at the 1976 Tehran International Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults.
The film was widely panned by critics and was a major financial flop upon release. It has never been released in any home-video format in the US, though a Russian-language DVD is available from some on-line retailers. According to some sources, possession of the film rights reverted back to the Russians, hence its disappearance from US TV and its absence on video, Laserdisc, and DVD.
A Germanic, gingerbread story, a little like Hansel and Gretel, which visits the future and the past and looks at the range of human nature. Though beautifully filmed it was Shirley Temple's first box office flop. Written by Ed Stephan
Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, a woodchopper's children, are led by the Fairy Berylune on a magical trip through the past, present, and future to locate the Blue Bird of Happiness. Written by Jim Beaver
A pair of peasant children, Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, Bread, and other entities. Written by Jim Beaver
Two peasant children, Mytyl and Tyltyl, are led by Berylune, a fairy, to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. Berylune gives Tyltyl a cap with a diamond setting, and when Tyltyl turns the diamond, the children become aware of and conversant with the souls of a Dog and Cat, as well as of Fire, Water, Bread, Light, and other presumably inanimate things. The troupe thus sets off to find the elusive Blue Bird of Happiness. Written by Jim Beaver
