Hello, I'm sorry for any mistakes, as I am writing from Google Translate.
For many years now, the RuNet has been looking for a film adaptation of Wilhelm Hauff’s fairy tale “Dwarf Nose,” which was broadcast in the USSR several times in the 1980s and frightened Soviet children. The most interesting thing is that none of the film adaptations corresponds to the memories of eyewitnesses.
Perhaps you can also help in the search by telling us if you have seen this film or by suggesting in which direction we could move.
Eyewitnesses say that this film was definitely not Soviet, probably Czech, English or German. It was shot very well, not like a children's fairy tale, but like a gothic fantasy, it was in color, very dark and pressing on the psyche, and the atmosphere was reminiscent of "Jane Eyre" of 1983, "The Invisible Man", and the BBC television production.
Here are the distinctive details that prove that this film has nothing in common with other film adaptations that were shown in the USSR:
- Jacob was not a boy, but a handsome young man;
- severed heads were shown in the witch's basket;
- in the witch's hut there were realistic squirrels with nutshells on their paws.
The film was a two-part series, but it is quite possible that it was split into two episodes in the USSR, or that the film in question is part of some kind of series, for example, one of those British television anthologies of fairy tales that were filmed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some recall that the film was called "Dwarf Nose", others refute this and say that the film was called something like this: "The Cautionary Story of Jacob", "The Tale of Poor Jacob", "The Long Nose", "Jacob the Nose", "The Enchanted Grass". People also remembered the superscript characters in the title and the Gothic font.
If you want to know more information about the film and its search, you can take a look at the Russian forum on this topic: http://xkarlik.mybb.ru/