Genevieve de Brabant (1907)
Article 5649 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-13-2019
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Dramatic fable

When a king leaves for the war, his steward makes advances on the queen; when he is rebuffed, he leaves her and her young son abandoned in the forest. How will she survive, and what will happen when the king returns?

This fable was apparently turned into an opera, and I’m assuming that this is an adaptation of that opera, much shortened so that it mostly consists of highlights of the story. As an example of this sort of thing, it’s passable, but nothing special. Zeroing in on the fantastic content is a problem, though. IMDB classifies it as a fantasy, and the title of a user review hints that the deer that figures in the story may be magical. Perhaps that is so, but within the context of this version of the story, it exhibits no magical properties that I can tell, though its presence proves pivotal in advancing the plot. At any rate, on its own terms, I can’t really classify this one as anything but marginalia in that regard.