The Pied Piper

Folk-pop troubadour Donovan is the Pied Piper of Hamelin in this 1972 musical take on the dark Grimm brothers' fairy tale made by French filmmaker Jacques Demy, director of the beloved French musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. This flower-power-meets-medieval-folk story is part feudal drama and part counterculture odyssey, with gypsy flower-children stumbling into the corrupt forces of church and state in a medieval German village under the shadow of the Black Plague. Shot partially in Bavaria, Germany, with a British cast, the film features Jack Wild as a crippled boy with a romantic heart, and Donald Pleasence, Diana Dors, John Hurt, and Roy Kinnear as corrupt and decadent townsfolk. Unfortunately, The Pied Piper is riddled with uneven performances and Donovan fails to make much of an impression as a leading man or a mystical hero (though his singing is quite nice). The ostensible message of celebrating knowledge, science, and tolerance over superstition and repression is somewhat undercut by the implacable Black Death falling upon the town like a biblical death sentence, and the collision of the villainous rich with good, innocent peasants is simplistic. This awkward mix is directed with all the finesse of bad children's theater and performed with either too much seriousness or too little restraint. Not without a certain fascination, this is still a misfire by any measure. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)