DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240086

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  112 lines

``FAIRYTALE'' MIRED IN CONTROVERSY

WHERE DOES reality end and magic begin?

The movies, a particularly visual art, have dealt with the question since their inception. Seldom, though, have films attempted such a mixture of adult skepticism and childhood imagination as ``Fairytale - A True Story.''

It's the ``true'' of the title that creates the questions.

In 1917, two little British girls claimed to have seen fairies in their garden. Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, ages 13 and 10, not only saw them - fluttery little flying creatures that were a mixture of hummingbird and dragonfly - but they also photographed them, using a new-fangled camera.

Two years later, the photos came to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle wrote an article in his Strand Magazine in 1920, supporting the photographs.

The debate has been raging ever since, although it has never reached the mainstream the way it will with the new film, which opened this weekend.

Doyle, the epitome of logical deduction, spent the last years of his life, from age 60, promoting Spiritualism. His first comment on the photograph was a letter to his friendly debater, magician Harry Houdini. He wrote: ``Yes, I have found something precious - two photographs: one of a goblin, the other of four fairies in a Yorkshire wood. A fake! You write? No, sir, I think not. However, all inquiry will be made. The fairies are about five inches high. In one, there is a single goblin dancing. In the other, four beautiful, luminous creatures. Yes, it is a revelation.''

The so-called ``revelation'' was hotly questioned. Houdini was the most famous illusionist of all time, but he firmly maintained that magic was just illusion. Houdini sought to disprove the photographs.

Making a movie on the subject proved to be a questionable encounter. What is the potential market? Is it a children's movie? If so, can it make a profit in a movie world that deals predominantly with action and special effects? With no big star names? And, in 1997, with a title like ``Fairytale''?

The film's realistic treatment and re-creation of England at the time of World War I was expected to get good reviews but the shadow of another movie, ``A Little Princess,'' hovered over the project. ``A Little Princess'' got almost unanimously favorable reviews. In fact, several critics named it the best movie of the year, but audiences didn't show up.

Wendy Finerman, who won an Oscar for ``Forrest Gump,'' went to bat for the ``Fairytale'' project because, as she puts it, ``it was just plain good storytelling, and the real joy of making movies is being able to tell a story like this.''

In an interview in New York, she admitted, though, that it was an uphill battle. ``It's been proven, to a certain extent, that people will go to see movies about little boys, but not about little girls. Little boys simply don't want to see a movie about girls. Don't ask me why that is, but you could write an interesting analysis of it. The title for `A Little Princess' was perceived as the real reason why it failed.''

Her co-producer on ``Fairytale'' is Bruce Davey, who won the Academy Award for ``Braveheart,'' a markedly more violent film. ``The tricky thing here is that we have to get out the word that this is not a film just for children,'' he said. ``It is an adult film too. It doesn't pander to children at all.''

Interestingly, no one interviewed in connection with the film actually admits that they believe in fairies in spite of the fact that the poster to advertise it is emblazoned with just one word: ``Believe.''

Florence Hoath and Elizabeth Earl, the two girls who play Elsie and Frances, admit that both have clapped to save Tinkerbell at productions of ``Peter Pan'' but they aren't actually so sure about fairies - even after making the movie. Hoath says, ``I think the point is to believe in something and the idea that you can have your own beliefs, or fantasies. That they don't have to be the same as other people's and that adults can't interfere.''

Peter O'Toole, a seven-time Oscar nominee, plays Doyle while Harvey Keitel is cast as Houdini.

Davey said, ``I believe in fairy tales more than fairies. They encourage imagination. The film reflects the idea that children are creatures of hope. They hope, and believe, that there is something greater - a world of mystery and imagination. As they grow into adulthood, they usually lose this. It's something that we really shouldn't lose. That's what the film is saying.''

Fairies have been a part of Western culture at least since the Middle Ages, ranging from the Scottish and Irish banshees, who lament the dead, to hobgoblins, who help around the house and rarely demand a reward for their work. Shakespeare's most famous fairy, Puck, gets a local stage outing this year in a combined Virginia Stage Company and Virginia Symphony production of ``A Midsummer Night's Dream.''

Yet never before or since has there been such an international debate as that sparked by the photographs. The original plates remain in the Bradford Museum of Photography in England.

The mania of the era is reflected by the fact that Beatrice Lillie, the leading British musical star, recorded the hilarious ``There Are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden'' in her high-pitched, chirping style. The two girls became international celebrities; one theory holds that the photograph came at a time when the world was most disillusioned by the horrendous deaths of World War I and wanted to believe in another world.

The movie condenses and slightly distorts the real facts, which aren't all there.

Both girls went to their deaths still claiming that they had seen the fairies. Elsie, however, eventually disputed the photos, although she still maintained that they had seen the fairies themselves. To escape the hounding press, she emigrated to America in 1923, only to find that the case was just as famous here. She married an American and lived in India, where he worked in a shipyard.

In the 1980s, there were hints from the cousins that the photographs might be fakes, although they disagreed on details. Today, it is generally accepted that four of the five photographs were faked, using cardboard cutouts. The fifth, known as ``The Fairy Bower,'' in which neither of the children appear, is still in dispute.

Frances maintained till her death that she had taken the picture and that it shows real fairies disappearing.

But can ``Fairytale - A True Story'' survive in a particularly skeptical 1997 movie market? It will need all the support of Tinkerbell, Puck and the banshees combined. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

FRAMESTORE

Frances Griffiths (Elizabeth Earl) is awed by the appearance of

Florella the Undine in ``Fairytale - A True Story.''

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