(Maurice Tourneur, US 1918, 80 min.)

Based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s fanciful play, The Blue Bird is a delicate dream of a film, staged largely in a tableau style whose tricks and affectations are as wondrous as the story itself. The children Mytyl and Tytyl find themselves spirited away to a fantasy land of animals and fairies and begin a quest to find the Blue Bird of Happiness. Beautiful and unsettling, The Blue Bird is Tourneur at his Pictorialist zenith. Restored with its original tints and tones by George Eastman House. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.