Every year, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians sit comfortably in the corner of the sofa after Christmas breakfast, to watch the Czech film “Three Nuts for Cinderella” from 1973.
Because it’s no secret that Knut Risan’s dubbing is difficult to resist?
The Christmas classic has been shown on NRK every Christmas since 1996, and this year is no exception. Despite the fact that it has been shown on television for the last 25 years, there is still a lot of viewers do not know about the popular film.
Especially behind the scenes, there is a lot that hides.
– We were in love
Among other things, not everyone knows that the two main characters, Libuse Safránková and Pavel Travnicek (71), fell in love with each other not only in the film, but also in reality.
Libuse and I were in love with each other. Let me put it this way: Libuse Safrankova was 19 years old, and I was 23. We went to theater school for the second year when we were offered to play in «Cinderella». We were young and unprofessional, and Libuse was and is a wonderfully beautiful woman !, he said at the time.
It’s no secret that Cinderella had two naughty step-sisters. One of those who played the evil step-sister in the 1973 film, Daniela Hlaváčová (76), revealed a slightly special detail from the filming.
In an interview with the Czech journalist Jana Podskalská in 2003, she revealed that she was pregnant during the filming, and had to hide her belly under big dresses.
– I do not forget the recording, even though it happened 30 years ago, because I was pregnant then. My daughter is 30 years old now, she said at the time.
After the recording of the Christmas success, Daniela has for several years worked at an art school in Prague in her home country.
That you as an actor end up in challenging situations, it has never been hidden. In 2003, a 30-year-old secret about the “Cinderella” recording was revealed.
It is about the scene where the horse-drawn sleigh ends up in icy water. In the film, it looks like the two actors Carola Braunbock and Daniela Hlaváčová fall into the water.
The scene was considered too dangerous for the women. Instead, the producers chose to use stuntmen.
– The worst scene for us was at the lake. Stuntmen had to jump into the water. Carola and I watched from our carriage and hoped it went well, revealed Daniela, who was pregnant during the recording, in the interview from 2013.
When they were to record the following scenes, where Carola and Daniela are out in the water, the producers took precautions to avoid frostbite.
Carola wore a wetsuit under her dress, while Daniela stood on a platform that brought her 15 centimeters above the water’s surface.
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– The winter was terrible that year. I have often wondered why we did not freeze more. The three boys (the prince and his companions) were wearing thin shoes because they had to dance in the snow. But none of this is seen on TV, she said.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, it is probably difficult to resist Knut Risan’s legendary dubbing in the film from 1973. Risan passed away in 2011.
He thus dubs all of the roles in the classic from 1973 – both men and women.
In an interview with Aftenposten in 2008, however, Risan revealed that it was not certain that it would be he who got the job. He got it by coincidence.
– There were no films that were dubbed that way, with only one voice. But that summer I was at NRK to dub another film. And then we had a few hours to spare. Then the producer pulled out a Czech film. “I have something here, maybe we should try it?” he said, and continued:
– It was quite improvised, the whole thing. It was not prepared, and we did not have special hopes for it either. But we saw that it was a beautiful film.
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Long days
In a interview with Dagbladet in 2015, Pavel Travnicek, who played the prince, revealed that he could not ride a horse when he was given the role of prince. This is despite the fact that several of the film’s scenes take place on horseback.
– The days were boring and long. And on top of that, I had to learn to ride a horse, he wrote in an e-mail at the time.
Fortunately, he managed to learn to ride in time for filming, and one of the scenes towards the end of the film could be completed with brilliance. Or at least it’s what the screen looks like.
In one of the last scenes, Cinderella and the prince ride towards the horizon, before you can see that Cinderella suddenly rides alone. It was because the prince’s horse got stuck in the snow.
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– The prince and I were going to ride side by side, but then I looked back and Pavel’s horse was stuck in the snow. We could only film once because the snow was supposed to be untouched. That’s why Cinderella rode alone, Safránková has previously said, according to Glamor.de.
Although the film has a happy ending, and the prince finds his Cinderella, there was not always joy and gloom in the years after the film was finished filming.
In 2002, the Czech magazine Super published a story about the actress. There, they accused her of having an alcohol problem, in addition to being violent towards her husband Josef Abrhám (81).
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This led to Safránková and her husband suing the magazine’s editor, Jiří Janoušek.
The couple Safránková and Abrhám won in court, but kept in the years after a very low profile in the media.
The actor, however, continued as an actor. In 2013 she was featured in the Czech comedy “Donšajni”, and in 1996 she won the film “Kolya”, in which she played one of the main roles, Oscar for best foreign film of the year.