Nutcracker: The Motion Picture

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's popular 1892 ballet The Nutcracker is derived from E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The ballet's scenario, crafted by Ivan Vsevolozhsky and Marius Petipa after a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, is far simpler and less nuanced than Hoffmann's original story. Vsevolozhsky and Petipa entirely omitted the Nutcracker character's complex backstory, "The Story of the Hard Nut," and expanded a short, satiric passage set in a Kingdom of Sweets to cover the whole of Act II. The ballet's scenario also introduced smaller changes, such as changing the heroine's name from Marie to Clara.[3]

Choreographer Kent Stowell, the artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), first invited the author-illustrator Maurice Sendak to collaborate on a Nutcracker production in 1979,[4] after Stowell's wife and colleague Francia Russell saw a Sendak-designed performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute in Houston.[5] Sendak initially rejected Stowell's invitation,[4] later explaining:

The Nutcrackers I've seen have all been dull. You have a simpering little girl, a Christmas party, a tree that gets big. Then you have a variety of people who do dances that seem to go on and on ad nauseam. Technically it's a mess, too; Acts I and II have practically nothing to do with each other. ... What you don't have is plot. No logic. You have lots of very pretty music, but I don't enjoy it because I'm a very pedantic, logical person. I want to know why things happen.[4]

Stowell gave up for the moment, but contacted Sendak the following year, asking him to reconsider and suggesting that they "start from scratch." They began collaborating in earnest in 1981, developing a Nutcracker concept different from traditional productions, and closer to the themes in Hoffmann's original story.[4]

PNB's Stowell/Sendak Nutcracker premiered in Seattle on December 13, 1983. It was a critical and popular success.[4] Lincoln Kirstein, director of the New York City Ballet, called Sendak's production design "absolutely magnificent, and I was filled with a violent greed and envy."[4] PNB continued to perform the Stowell/Sendak production annually for 31 years, ending in 2014; in 2015, the company premiered a production using George Balanchine's choreography from the New York City Ballet version, paired with designs by the illustrator Ian Falconer.[6]

At the premiere of the stage production, two Walt Disney Studios executives encouraged Stowell and Sendak to turn their Nutcracker into a film, suggesting Carroll Ballard as director. Stowell and Sendak were interested with the proposal, but discussed at length whether it would be wiser simply to film the ballet on stage or to adapt it into a full-fledged film version.[4] Ballard, who had met Sendak in Los Angeles in the early 1980s[7] and who had previously directed The Black Stallion and the Disney-produced Never Cry Wolf, agreed to do the film after watching a performance in Seattle with his wife and 5-year-old daughter.[4]

Ballard described his directorial approach as follows: "I tried to do two things. To use photography to capture, as best we could, the qualities of the dancers, and to strengthen the story so it would be more appropriate for the film."[8] Ballard especially wanted to clarify that most of the story is dreamed by Clara. In the process of adaptation to film, Stowell revised large portions of his choreography; Sendak revised some designs, and created additional ones from scratch.[4]

Part of Ballard's adaptation was intended to focus the characters' psychology, as he later elaborated:

I particularly changed the nature of the relationship between Clara and Drosselmeyer. In the ballet, he's a mischievous sort of dirty old man, always playing tricks on people. I tried to make him a kind of anti-social guy with no family who is obsessed with making toys. His only relationship is with this little girl. I tried to make him sympathetic.[8]

Willard Carroll, one of the producers, told the press that the production team "rethought [Nutcracker] for film the way Kent and Maurice rethought it for the stage. Basically, it's a silent movie done with visual comedy and emotion." Tom Wilhite, another producer, described the adaptation as "a cross between an MGM musical and a Korda picture."[5] The animator Henry Selick assisted in the adaptation, shooting second unit for the film as well as drawing storyboards and contributing new fantasy sequences.[9] In a 2021 interview, Ballard reported that he and Sendak were eager to incorporate much more of the Hoffmann story into the film version, without success:

I was struggling, trying to make it into a thing of its own rather than just filming the stage version. Both Maurice and I were arguing to […] somehow bring more of "The Hard Nut" into the story, give it a little more weight as a film. But the guys who were [providing] the money were intractable. They thought they could make a cheap Christmas film out of it and make some money. And that was it.[7]

Due to budget restrictions, all footage for Nutcracker was filmed over a period of ten days.[8] Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, on the University of Washington campus, was used as a filming location.[5] Parts of the film were also shot in Salt Lake City, Utah.[10] The film's cast is made up of PNB dancers from the stage production. Vanessa Sharp, a 12-year-old dancer, played Clara. Hugh Bigney, at 30, used a false chin, nose, and bald cap to play the much older role of Drosselmeyer; Bigney's young daughter also appeared in the film as a baby mouse.[5] Other leads included Patricia Barker as the older Clara in the dream, and Wade Walthall as the Nutcracker Prince. The actress Julie Harris recorded narration for the film.[11]

In an interview during production, Ballard noted he was eager to avoid the cinematic idiosyncrasies of recent dance films, such as Nijinsky (1980), which had filmed its dancers mostly from the knee up. "I think it's important to see the whole dancer ... Where we have a great performance, you'll see it all," he said. "I want to avoid movie trickery. It's a helluva lot tougher to shoot than I thought it would be."[5]

During production, Ballard had numerous disputes with Sendak. "More often, he won," reported Sendak. "After all, he was working in a medium in which I was a novice."[4]

For the film's soundtrack, Sir Charles Mackerras conducted the London Symphony Orchestra at the Watford Town Hall in London in a new recording of Tchaikovsky's score. The choral section of "Waltz of the Snowflakes" was performed by the Tiffin School Boys' Choir.[12] The soundtrack also includes the "Duet of Daphnis and Chloe" from Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades,[12] performed by Cathryn Pope and Sarah Walker.[13] Telarc released the complete soundtrack on compact disc, coinciding with the release of the film.[13]