Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (1986) on Netflix
Drosselmeyer, Clara's godfather, brings toys to the Christmas party and shows the children the mechanical castle he built. Clara is amused by a nutcracker that drops from the tree.
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Trailer
Plot summary
A clockmaker and toymaker named Drosselmeyer works in his shop on an intricate mechanical piece that mixes a miniature castle, a musical box and a toy stage, and falls asleep at his table. In her bedroom, Clara, a girl approaching adolescence, dreams that she dances with a prince until her younger brother Fritz brings up a giant rat that bites her hand and leaves her ugly. She wakes in terror. At the family Christmas party, the sight of Fritz playing with a hand puppet rat like the one in her dream unsettles her. Drosselmeyer, a family friend, arrives with toys and shows the guests the castle, whose ballerina and sword dancer figures move.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Carroll Ballard and designer Maurice Sendak clashed repeatedly during production, and Sendak said Ballard usually won, since film was a medium in which Sendak was a novice.
- Budget restrictions forced the whole film to be shot in ten days, with Meany Hall for the Performing Arts on the University of Washington campus used as a filming location.
- Carroll Ballard said he and Maurice Sendak argued for bringing more of "The Hard Nut" into the film, but the financiers were intractable and thought they could make a cheap Christmas film and some money.
- Hugh Bigney was 30 when he played the much older Drosselmeyer, using a false chin, nose and bald cap; his young daughter also appeared in the film as a baby mouse.
- Pacific Northwest Ballet performed the Stowell/Sendak Nutcracker annually for 31 years, ending in 2014, then replaced it in 2015 with a production using George Balanchine's choreography and designs by Ian Falconer.
