Little Red Riding Hood (1997 film)

Little Red Riding Hood is a 1997 black and white short movie (12 minutes long). Written and directed by David Kaplan and with cinematography of Scott Ramsey, it features then-teenage Christina Ricci in the title role and is narrated by Quentin Crisp.

The movie was awarded at the Avignon Film Festival 1998 (Prix Panavision award to David Kaplan), at the Avignon/New York Film Festival (Vision Award to Scott Ramsey) and at the Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival 1999 (Certificate of Excellence to the Best Cinematography - Scott Ramsey).

Credits

• David Kaplan: Director and writer
• Rocco Caruso and Jasmine Kosovic: Producers
• Scott Ramsey: Cinematographer

Plot

This version of the classical story "Little Red Riding Hood" is a sort of black comedy. The black-and-white scenario shows the forest of the tale and a narrator is the only speaking character.

A wolf — clearly a man in disguise — tries to trick the girl. He successfully eats the grandmother, and then tries to eat the girl. However, the girl tricks him in turn and survives. She is clever enough not to need any huntsman. She does not "rescue" the eaten grandmother at all. In fact she eats her flesh as well, even after being warned by the cat. Combined with the teasing of the wolf after she escaped to make him follow her this short movie presents an image of "Little Red Riding Hood" that is mildly put: "not entirely innocent."

As such the movie is clearly based on one of the earliest version of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, known as "The False Grandmother."

See also

• The fairy tale story of "Little Red Riding Hood" in the Randal Kleiser directed, full length experimental film entitled Red Riding Hood.
• The animated cartoon "take off" of "Little Red Riding Hood" in the short film entitled Red Hot Riding Hood.

External links

• Little Red Riding Hood at IMDb