The Little Princess

[Julia Dodoo]

ALittle Princess is a 1995 American fantasy drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarn. Loosely based upon the 1905 novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the film stars Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham, Liesel Matthews, Vanessa Lee Chester, Rusty Schwimmer, Arthur Malet, and Errol Sitahal. Its plot, heavily influenced by the 1939 cinematic version, focuses on a young girl who is relegated to a life of servitude at New York City boarding school after receiving news that her father was killed in combat.

A Little Princess was released in the United States by Warner Bros., through their Family Entertainment label, on May 10, 1995. The film garnered positive reviews and received various awards, including two Oscar nominations for its achievements in art direction and cinematography.

In 1914, a sweet and caring young girl named Sara Crewe lives in India with her widowed father Richard, a wealthy British Army Officer, who shares his love for stories of myths and magic. Called in to serve in the Great War, Richard enrolls Sara at an all-girls boarding school in New York City, which her late mother had attended run by its haughty and spiteful headmistress Maria Minchin, and her kindly sister Amelia.

Instructing Maria to spare no expense for his daughter's comfort, Richard furnishes the school's largest suite and leaves Sara with a locket once owned by her mother and a doll named Emily, which he tells her will keep them connected through magic. Although stifled by Maria's strictness, Sara becomes popular among the girls, including an African-American scullery maid, Becky, for her kindness and powerful imagination. In her spare time, Sara writes to her father, who is caught in a gas attack while trying to save a fellow soldier in the trenches.

Though her life is bleak, Sara remains kind to others, but gets her revenge on Lavinia, a school bully. Charles Randolph, the school's elderly neighbor, receives word that his son John has been declared missing in action while fighting in Europe. Ram Dass, Charles' Indian associate, comes to notice Sara from the neighboring attic, overhearing her imaginative stories. When a wounded soldier suffering from amnesia is misidentified as John, Ram Dass encourages Charles to take the man in.

Meanwhile, Sara's friends sneak into Maria's office and recover her locket, visiting Sara that night to hear her tales of Prince Rama. Scorned after catching Sara, along with the other girls, Maria punishes her and has Becky locked up in the attic for an entire day. However, Sara stands up to Maria's cruelty with her father's belief that "all girls are princesses" no matter their lot in life. She later comforts Becky by imagining a feast and fine clothes for them, awakening to find that the dream has come true, with their attic secretly transformed by Ram Dass.

Inspired by Sara, Amelia runs away with a milkman, and Maria soon discovers the locket is missing. Confronting Sara in the attic, she accuses her of "stealing" the finery left by Ram Dass and viciously locks Sara in her room while she summons the police. With Becky's help, Sara narrowly escapes by making a perilous climb over to the Randolph house. As Maria and the police search for her, Sara discovers that Richard is the recovering soldier but he, suffering from amnesia, does not recognize her. Though Maria does clearly recognize Richard, she deliberately lies by spitefully saying that Sara has "no father". As Sara is dragged away by the police, Ram Dass helps Richard regain his memory. Outside Richard saves Sara and the two are happily reunited while Maria, defeated, angrily walks away.

Sometime later, Charles has taken over the school, now a much happier place for the girls, and has found peace in knowing that Richard tried to save his son. Richard's fortune has been restored and he has adopted Becky. As punishment for her vile treatment of Sara and the other girls, Maria is reduced to working for a young chimney sweep she mistreated earlier. Sara gives Emily to the girls and shares an unexpected hug with Lavinia, before she and Becky depart for home.

All of the tracks were composed by Patrick Doyle. Three of the tracks feature soloists. The "String Quintet in C major Perger 108, MH 187" by Michael Haydn is also used in the film. The film also features the New London Children's Choir.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 37 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Alfonso Cuarn adapts Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel with a keen sense of magic realism, vividly recreating the world of childhood as seen through the characters."[4] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 83 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[5]

Janet Maslin called the film "a bright, beautiful and enchantingly childlike vision", one that "draw[s] its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale" and "takes enough liberties to re-invent rather than embalm Miss Burnett's assiduously beloved story". She concluded:

From the huge head of an Indian deity, used as a place where stories are told and children play, to the agile way a tear drips from Sara's eye to a letter read by her father in the rain, A Little Princess has been conceived, staged and edited with special grace. Less an actors' film than a series of elaborate tableaux, it has a visual eloquence that extends well beyond the limits of its story. To see Sara whirling ecstatically in her attic room on a snowy night, exulting in the feelings summoned by an evocative sight in a nearby window, is to know just how stirringly lovely a children's film can be.[6]

Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film Cuarn's "dazzling North American [sic] debut" and wrote it "exquisitely re-creates the ephemeral world of childhood, an enchanted kingdom where everything, even make-believe, seems possible ... Unlike most distaff mythology, the film does not concern the heroine's sexual awakening; it's more like the typical hero's journey described by scholar Joseph Campbell. Sara, the adored Spoiled and pampered child of a wealthy British widower, must pass a series of tests, thereby discovering her inner strengths".[7]

A Little Princess is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is an expanded version of the short story "Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's", which was serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine from December 1887, and published in book form in 1888. According to Burnett, after she composed the 1902 play A Little Un-fairy Princess based on that story, her publisher asked that she expand the story as a novel with "the things and people that had been left out before".[4] The novel was published by Charles Scribner's Sons (also publisher of St. Nicholas) with illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts and the full title A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time.[1]

Captain Ralph Crewe, a wealthy English widower, has been raising his only child and daughter, Sara, in India where he is stationed with the British Army. Because the Indian climate is considered too harsh for their children, British families living there traditionally send their children to boarding school back home in England. The Captain enrolls his seven-year-old daughter at an all-girls boarding school in London and dotes on his daughter so much that he orders and pays the haughty headmistress, Miss Minchin, for special treatment and exceptional luxuries for Sara, such as a private room for her with a personal maid and a separate sitting room (see parlour boarder), along with Sara's own private carriage and a pony. Miss Minchin openly fawns over Sara for her money, but is secretly envious and dislikes Sara almost from the outset.

Intelligent, imaginative and kind, Sara sees through flattery and remains unspoiled; she embraces the status of a 'princess' accorded by the other students, and lives up to it with her generosity. She befriends Ermengarde, the school dunce; Lottie, a four-year-old student given to tantrums; and Becky, the stunted scullery maid.

Four years later, Sara's eleventh birthday is celebrated at Miss Minchin's with a lavish party. Just as it ends, Miss Minchin learns of Captain Crewe's unfortunate demise due to jungle fever. Furthermore, the previously wealthy captain has lost his entire fortune, investing in a friend's diamond mines. Preteen Sara is left an orphan and a pauper with nowhere to go. Miss Minchin is left with a sizable debt for Sara's school fees and luxuries, including her birthday party. Infuriated and pitiless, she takes away all of Sara's possessions (except for an old black frock and her doll, Emily), and makes her live in a cold and poorly furnished attic, forcing her to earn her keep by working as a servant.

For the next two years Miss Minchin starves and overworks Sara, turning her into a menial servant and unpaid tutor, with the prospect of turning her into an under-paid teacher when she is old enough. Most of the students take their tone from Miss Minchin, but Sara is consoled by her few friends and uses her imagination to cope with her bleak existence. She continues to be kind and polite to everyone, even her abusers, in the belief that conduct, not money, make a true princess. On one of the bleakest days when she herself is ravenous, she finds a coin and buys six buns, but gives a beggar-child five of them because the latter is starving.

Mr. Carrisford is revealed to have been Captain Crewe's partner in the diamond mine venture. Thinking all was lost and both suffering from severe illness, Carrisford abandoned Captain Crewe and wandered in a delirium. When he recovered, it was to find Crewe dead - and the mines a reality. Extremely rich but suffering both ill health and pangs of conscience, he returns to England and makes it his mission to find Sara, though he does not know where to look.

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