The Seven Swans

Summary

A viridian-tinted fairy-tale fever-dream unfurls inside the Kingdom of the Seven Dials, a clock-faced realm where time itself seems to sweat under the gaze of a malevolent monarch. Princess Tweedledee—part porcelain doll, part storm-in-a-teacup—watches her seven brothers mutate into alabaster swans, their human laughter replaced by the creak of pinions, all courtesy of the Witch of the Bouncing Ball, a queen whose cruelty pirouettes on the rebound of a rubber sphere. The film, a 1919 phantasmagoria stitched together by J. Searle Dawley from Andersen’s marrow, becomes a chiaroscuro meditation on sibling ransom: every feather plucked equals a syllable of silence, every hourglass inversion a gamble against permanent avian exile. In trembling two-tone palettes, the narrative arcs from candle-lit parlour whimsy to salt-stung marsh horror, climaxing on a scaffold of thorns where Tweedledee’s muteness—her self-imposed vow of textile devotion—must outwit the witch’s ricochet magic before the final dial clicks midnight.

Synopsis

Once upon a time there was a beautiful little Princess, Tweedledee, who lived with her father and seven brothers in 'The Kingdom of the Seven Dials'. The Wicked Queen, the Witch of the Bouncing Ball, turns Tweedledee's brothers into seven swans. From film advertisement, 'Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate', 18 January 1919.