The Little Prince (1974)

2/11/06

Also seen by me lately: From the 'why did I watch this' department comes The Little Prince. Directed by Stanley Donen (Singing In The Rain) and sporting a Lerner and Loewe score (My Fair Lady), Prince is based on the beloved French children's tale by Antonie de Saint-Exupery. In the film Richard Kiley plays a never named French test-pilot during the period 'between the wars', who after his experimental plane crashes in the Sahara comes across a strange little boy. The boy or 'Little Prince' hails from Asteroid B-612 a little planet that could just about fit in my family room. While the pilot fixs his plane the prince tells him story's about his journey from his home (where he lived with a talking rose) to a number of other small planets each ruled over by an adult arch-type, king, businessman, historian, general, and his later dealings with a snake (Bob Fosse) and a fox (Gene Wilder) here on Earth. A strange story that gets rather slow once the prince arrives on our planet, the movie at least has the virtue of strongly invoking a feeling of desire for ones own lost childhood. I vaguely remember an animated Little Prince program that aired on Nickelodean in the mid-1980's, I didn't really understand that shows logic either but there always seemed to be something going on beneath its surfice worth knowing about. The Princes creator Antonie de Saint-Exupery was a fighter pilot who was killed when his plane was shot down over the Mediterranean during World War II (the aircraft was only just discovered two-or-three years ago), and became something of a national treasure, his image even appeared on now defunct French currency.