The Little Prince | |
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Directed by | Stanley Donen |
Screenplay by | Alan Jay Lerner |
Based on | The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
Produced by | Stanley Donen |
Starring | Richard Kiley Bob Fosse Steven Warner Gene Wilder |
Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
Edited by | Peter Boita George Hively |
Music by | Frederick Loewe (score) Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) Angela Morley (arranged & orchestrated) |
Production company | Stanley Donen Films |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 88 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom United States [1] |
Language | English |
The Little Prince is a 1974 British-American sci-fi fantasy-musical film with screenplay and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and orchestrated by Angela Morley. It was both directed and produced by Stanley Donen and based on the 1943 classic children-adult's novella, The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), by the writer, poet and aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who disappeared near the end of the Second World War some 15 months after his fable was first published.
The original Little Prince was first published in 1943, and is the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944). It is a poetic tale self-illustrated in watercolours in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes societal criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated The Little Prince in New York City and Asharoken, N.Y. in mid-to-late 1942 while exiled in the United States after the Fall of France, with the manuscript being completed in October. [2] It would be first published in early 1943 in both English and French, but only in the U.S. It would later appear in his native homeland of France posthumously, after the liberation of Paris, [3] All of Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned in Nazi-occupied France. Since first being published the novella has been adapted to various media over the decades, including audio recordings, stage, ballet, and operatic works.
The fantasy-musical film adaptation of The Little Prince was directed and produced by Stanley Donen, and stars Steven Warner in the title role, with Richard Kiley as the aviator, titled as The Pilot. Additional cast members included Bob Fosse as The Snake, Gene Wilder as The Fox, Donna McKechnie as the petulant, vain Rose, Joss Ackland as The King, and Victor Spinetti as The Historian. The film's desert sequences were shot on location in Tunisia.
The production was Lerner and Loewe's final musical. The music's creative team were dissatisfied with the film's Hollywood treatment, with Loewe refusing to visit London to supervise the arrangement and recording of the score.[ citation needed ]
Based in the 1943 classic book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the fable tells the story of an aviator forced to make an emergency landing in the Sahara Desert. There he is befriended by a young boy, the Little Prince, who had descended to Earth from Asteroid B-612. In the days that follow, The Pilot hears about his past and various journeys throughout the Solar System.
As he travels through space, the Little Prince encounters several strange grown-ups on different planetoids, all with a skewed or curious way of looking at life. But it is not until he finally reaches Earth, that the Little Prince learns his most important life lessons of all, mainly from The Fox, and The Snake. Before the Little Prince dies, he shares those lessons with The Pilot. Although The Pilot tries to keep the Little Prince alive, the boy disappears in the morning and The Pilot searches for him in the desert but gives up after realizing that the Little Prince never existed. Soon The Pilot is able to start his plane and flies away but hears the laughter of the Little Prince in the starry night; he believes the boy has returned to space.
Richard Burton was actively pursued for the role of The Pilot. Burton had had a huge success on Broadway with Lerner and Loewe's musical production Camelot , but turned down the role in The Little Prince.
The film was shot on location in Tunisia.
In 1973, Lerner and Loewe recorded the score at the Palm Springs Desert Museum, with Lerner on vocals and Loewe at the piano. It included "Matters of Consequence", which was cut from the film. It is one of only a few existing recordings of the duo performing together.
The film had production design by John Barry (not to be confused with composer John Barry, who later composed a musical adaptation of The Little Prince for Broadway).
A soundtrack album was released by ABC Records. [4] It is now available in CD format on the Decca Records label. [5]
The film opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on November 7, 1974 [6] in a show including The Nativity , The Rockettes and the Will Irwin Orchestra and grossed $215,000 in its opening week. [7]
Bob Fosse appears in the film as The Snake for one song, "A Snake in the Grass", during which he does a dance sequence that he choreographed, which includes trademark Fosse elements such as hip thrusts, jazz hands and use of hat and jacket as props. This scene in the film has been speculated to have been a major influence on singer Michael Jackson's costume and choreography for performances of his 1982 hit song "Billie Jean". Fosse's dance sequence even included a variation on the moonwalk, a dance step that Jackson included in his "Billie Jean" performances that later became his signature move. [8]
Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre both for the stage and on film. Lerner won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
Frederick Loewe was an American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on a series of Broadway musicals, including Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, all of which were made into films, as well as the original film musical Gigi (1958), which was first transferred to the stage in 1973.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry, known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator.
The Little Prince is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.
Wind, Sand and Stars is a memoir by the French aristocrat aviator-writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and a winner of several literary awards. It was first published in France in February 1939, and was then translated by Lewis Galantière and published in English by Reynal and Hitchcock in the United States later the same year.
Petit Prince may refer to:
Tarfaya is a coastal Moroccan town, located at the level of Cape Juby, in western Morocco, on the Atlantic coast. It is located about 890 km southwest of the capital Rabat, and around 100 km from Laayoune and Lanzarote, in the far east of the Canary Islands. During the colonial era, Tarfaya was a Spanish colony known as Villa Bens. It was unified with Morocco in 1958 after the Ifni War, which started one year after the independence of other regions of Morocco.
Saint-Ex is a 1996 British television film, which was released as an episode of the BBC Two TV series Bookmark, after its premiere at the London Film Festival. The story documents the life of French author-aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in the form of a "tone poem". The film was directed by Anand Tucker and stars Bruno Ganz, Miranda Richardson and Janet McTeer. The screenplay was by Frank Cottrell Boyce, while the writer's sons, Aidan and Joseph, portrayed the Saint-Exupéry brothers, François and Antoine, as children.
The Little Prince is a play based on the book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, adapted by Rick Cummins and John Scoullar before 2000. Rick Cummins wrote the music, and John Scoullar wrote the script and lyrics. There are several changes from the book, including the omission of the drunkard (tippler), switchman and merchant characters; the removal of a great deal of the narration from the aviator; significant changes to the rose scenes; and a large change in the order of events.
Consuelo, comtesse de Saint-Exupéry, was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and was married to the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Little Prince may refer to:
The Adventures of the Little Prince may refer to:
The Adventures of the Little Prince is an anime series based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Made by the animation studio Knack Productions, the series, originally titled The Prince of the Stars: Le Petit Prince, aired in Japan on the TV Asahi network from July 1978 to March 1979. Dubbed into English, the series premiered in the United States in 1985 on Nickelodeon and was rerun through June 1, 1985 to December 29, 1989. It was also broadcast on TVOntario throughout the 1980s beginning in 1985, a station that would later pick up the dub of the 2010 French adaptation. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, of Mobile Suit Gundam fame, was involved in this series as a director.
The Little Prince and the Aviator is a musical with a book by Hugh Wheeler, lyrics by Don Black, and music by John Barry.
Night Flight, published as Vol de nuit in 1931, was the second novel by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It went on to become an international bestseller and a film based on it appeared in 1933. Its popularity, which only grew with the ideological conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s, was due to its master theme of sacrificing personal considerations to a cause in which one believes.
The Little Prince is a 2015 French-Italian animated fantasy adventure comedy-drama film directed by Mark Osborne and based on the 1943 novella of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The film stars the voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Bud Cort, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, James Franco, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, Riley Osborne, Albert Brooks and Mackenzie Foy. It is the first adaptation as a full-length animated feature of The Little Prince.
The Little Prince is an animated children's television series inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novel The Little Prince that began broadcast in late 2010. The series was created by Method Animation and the Saint-Exupéry-d'Agay Estate Production, in co-production with LPPTV, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Fabrique d'Images, DQ Entertainment and ARD, in participation with France Télévisions, WDR, Rai Fiction, Télévision Suisse Romande and satellite operator SES S.A.
Parc du Petit Prince is a theme park inspired by the tale of the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is located in Ungersheim in the Alsace region in France, more specifically in the Haut-Rhin department. The park is the first aerial parc in the world and the most visited in the region.
The Antoine de Saint Exupéry Museum is a museum of air mail in Tarfaya, Morocco. Founded in 2004, it is devoted to author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), who lived there for two years, from 1927 to 1929, and found there the inspiration for much of his literary work.
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