JasparLamarCrabb It's not the free-spirited musical one would expect given that Donovan, the high priest of pop psychedelia, has the title role. Nor is it anything approaching a children's film. This is a grim, unrelentingly downbeat telling of the classic tale of a piper who rids a German burgh of black plague-infested rats...at least in part...as the piper is off screen for most of the film. Instead, director Jacques Demy focuses on the politics of Hamelin and the infighting between town officials Roy Kinnear, John Hurt, Donald Pleasence and others. Hurt, as a sleazy royal, marries an 11 year old girl, much to the chagrin of Jack Wild (as a lame artist). There's even a burning at the stake! Despite the identity crisis the film suffers from, it's still fairly intriguing, capturing depressing village life of 1349. Donovan sings a few songs and does indeed lead the rats out of the village (among other things) and the acting is all great, particularly by Hurt. A very blowzy Diana Dors plays Kinnear's wife (one shutters thinking about THAT courtship).

MartinHafer When I began watching "The Pied Piper" I assumed it would be a children's movie. After all, it starred pop singing star, Donovan, and is a tale traditionally told to kids. However, soon after it began I could tell this was no child's tale! Instead of the version I heard, this one is set during the time of the Black Death in the mid-1300s and is a tale about superstition, hypocrisy, wretchedness and greed. The version I'd heard as a child was more just a story about greed.Hamelin, Germany is a town possessing three sorts of people--smart people (and I counted only three--Gavin, the Alchemist and the Piper), greedy turds (all the church people and leaders of the town) and assorted victims just waiting to get it! When the Plague nears, the smart Alchemist somehow knows the rats carry the disease (how he knows, we are never sure) and warns the town that they must rid themselves of the rats. At first, no one takes him seriously but when the rat population explodes, the folks in town become revolting (insert own joke) and the town's officials are forced to do something other than scrounge for money or conscripts in some god-awful war for the Papacy.You probably are familiar with the rest of the tale, but if you aren't, the Piper agrees to remove the rats IF they pay him a thousand gilders. They readily agree, but after the miraculous feat occurs, they stiff him--saying they'll give him fifty and he should be happy to have that! Nice, huh?! So, to teach them a lesson (or perhaps he's a pedo), he plays his pipe again and the kids of town all follow him and disappear forever. The towns folk don't realize what's happening, as they're too busy burning the Alchemist alive for 'causing the Plague'! Only the handicapped kid, Gavin, is spared, as he walks too slow to keep up with the Piper. Whether this is a good thing or not is a bit vague--after all, what would a grown man want to do with all those kids?!? The film is well-made but also a really creepy movie from start to finish. It is more a story about stupidity and karmic retribution--not bad topics, really, but far from a fun film for the entire family! The costumes and sets were very nice but the whole film is a creepy downer (though I must admit the depiction of Plague was VERY sanitized). I know it's not in the traditional tale, but I wanted to have some reassurance the Piper was not a serial killer, pedophile or owner of a dog food company!!! By the way, in one scene Donovan plays a modern six-string guitar--something not invented until very recently. The original four and five-stringed varieties were not even invented until 100-200 years after the film was set.

ozymandias1973 Watching this recently, I remembered certain scenes from when I watched it as a child of about 7 or 8, some twenty-five years ago. That is testament to how effective some of The Pied Piper is. Indeed, in some ways it hardly qualifies as a "childrens' film" at all, as it starts with a picture of a heretic being burned at the stake and ends with the death of one of the main characters by the same means. Clearly Demy had Bergman's The Seventh Seal in mind for the general feel of the film, which stresses the irrationality and brutality of the times. However, the screenwriters and Demy add another ingredient - the political chicanery of the Church, the aristocracy and the merchant class, sometimes colluding together, at other times each promoting their own special interests. It's not difficult to read the film as a quasi-Marxist parable about feudal society, and the film-makers clearly intended something of the sort. If that makes it all sound very heavy, actually the film is fairly fast-moving and fun, especially because of the wonderfully comic grotesque playing of Donald Pleasance and Roy Kinnear. Fans of these actors should definitely seek this film out - Pleasance is as good as he was in "Death Line" (AKA "Raw Meat") made about the same time, and Kinnear is nearly as good as he was in "Juggernaut", another overlooked but very interesting British film of the early 70s. There is also a very good performance from Michael Hordern as the rationalist alchemist, one of his better and most substantial but unfortunately least known performances. Nostalgia fans can also take pleasure in remembering a time when Jack Wild, made famous by "Oliver", was considered a star. The Pied Piper deserves its mixed critical reputation. Demy does not here have the firm control over his material he had in earlier films. The main flaw is the total lack of characterisation of the Piper, and the terrible non-acting of the folk singer Donovan in that role. His musical interludes are just embarrassing and the worst thing about the film (for a similar ruining of a otherwise thoughtful historical film by a miscast singing star, see 1969's "Where's Jack?" with Tommy Steele). This is a pity as the socio-political stuff at the edges of the film, plus the costumes and scenery, are very good indeed. Overall, this is certainly worth a watch if it turns up on TV or you might, as I did, seek it out on a secondhand VHS cassette. It is not a major film but it's an endearing oddity, and certainly a must-see for Demy students or fans of Brtish film in the early 70s.

dbdumonteil Donovan sings three songs :outside the wonderful "sailing homeward",he performs two ditties "I'm the pied piper" (obvious) and "life has her (!) ups and her downs".It was filmed on location in Germany"The pied piper" ,like "Peau d'âne" which was released the year before, is a fairy tale ,but the mood is drastically different:I would say that "peau d'âne" is a movie for children that can appeal to adults,and "the pied piper" a movie for grown -ups which can appeal to children."Peau d'âne" is the bright Renaissance,with its châteaux de la Loire such as Chambord,and the forest and the country are not hostile,it's a providential world."The pied piper" is the dark Middle Ages;the beginning might have been influenced by Bergman's "the seventh seal":the wandering entertainers ,the plague ,the "sorcerer" ...The screen play is almost an original one:the famous legend lasts barely ten minutes ,the rest of the plot is completely new and extremely pertinent.Two worlds clash in Demy's work: the world of Melius the jew,that of an embryonic science and a desire to explain the things and to react to them:he comes much too soon and anyway the Jews suffered persecutions in those troubled times too:think that Louis IX,King of France of the thirteenth century ,forced the jews to wear the "rouelle",a sinister ancestor of Hitler's yellow star.And he became Saint-Louis, canonized by the Catholic Church.And there's the world of the bishops,sinister characters dressed in red,red as blood,who personify intolerance and ignorance :unlike Melius,they react to the bubonic plague by saying it's a God-sent ordeal,because men are sinners,they do not have to understand but they must be ready to repent and to mortify (self-flagellation).The wedding is revealing as well:listen to the bishop,the way he speaks to the bride:she is an impure human being,whose only way is to follow her husband's rule:till 1215,woman had no soul!Demy expresses his disgust with the famous scene of the wedding cake: big rats appear,they had entered the cathedral-pastry.It won't be long before the magnificent dessert crumble .And it will not be long before Hamelin itself and its hypocrite priests crumble like Sodom .So the pied piper is like God's angel ,leading Lot out of this doomed place.The children are the just men,sometimes sacrified as Hurt's unfortunate bride ,a child herself -a girl used to get married at an early age in those ancient times.Demy 's pessimism,which passed for melancholy in "Lola" , muted in "les parapluies de Cherbourg",seemed to disappear in "les demoiselles de Rochefort" and "peau d'âne", is glaring in "the pied piper".This is probably his darkest work.Thus ,one can forget his return to the ponderous comedy with Deneuve and Mastroianni in 1972"."The pied piper" remains an overlooked,ignored work.How many Demy's fans do not even know that this film exists?I urge them to see it,it's an essential part of his work,and maybe his swansong,because he was never to reach such heights afterward.