Film / The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute has had three live-action screen adaptations to date – not counting, of course, the innumerable filmed performances. A 1975 film was directed by Ingmar Bergman, with a Swedish translation of the libretto, and a 2006 film was directed by Kenneth Branagh, with the libretto translated by Stephen Fry. A third film adaptation directed by Florian Sigl premiered at the Zurich Film Festival in 2022 and was released in theatres on March 10, 2023.

Tropes present in both adaptations

• Driven to Suicide: Apart from the Interrupted Suicide of Pamina and Papageno, which is also present in the original, in both films Monostatos kills himself, and in Branagh's version the Queen and her ladies commit suicide as well.
• Good Colours, Evil Colours:
  • With the sopranos, it’s easy to tell between the heroine and the villainess. Pamina’s dress is cream-coloured in Bergman’s version and white in Branagh’s version to reflect her purity and goodness. The Queen (as well as, in Bergman’s version, her ladies) wears black.
  • Meanwhile, Sarastro and his subjects/soldiers wear red.
• Related in the Adaptation: Sarastro is explicitly stated to be Pamina’s father.
• Whispered Threat: The films' handling of the scene where Monostatos tries to blackmail Pamina into accepting him. Theatrical stagings usually have him Suddenly Shouting, but in both films, he speaks in a whisper during the entire scene, coldly and menacingly (Bergman's version) or passionately and near-tearfully (Branagh's version). Notably, while in theatrical productions Pamina stands up to him, the films have her so terrified she only gasps with fright until Sarastro arrives to the rescue.

Tropes present in the 1975 film

• Adaptational Explanation:
  • Rather than being introduced by the three ladies, the three boys appear and introduce themselves after the ladies have left. This helps avoid the confusion about their allegiance, as they are clearly on Sarastro's side from the start.
  • The trio of Pamina, Tamino and Sarastro is cut to avoid a plot hole (when Pamina freaks out because Tamino allegedly stops talking to her, even though he has recently sung to her in that trio, and it is clearly shown that the trio is a conversation between the characters and not their thoughts that only the audience hears).
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In this production, Papageno doesn’t wear a feathered outfit but instead dresses like a regular peasant, making Monostatos mistaking him for Satan somewhat of a Non Sequitur.
• Affectionate Parody: Has an air of this, being Denser and Wackier than some other adaptations, often making the aesops even more Anvilicious by having the actors holding signs literally spelling them out for the audience.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite working for the Queen of the Night, Papageno doesn’t seem to believe in dragons.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: The Final Battle essentially amounts to this, with the Queen and her troops readying themselves for battle only for Sarastro and his guards quickly driving them away.
• Babies Ever After: The last scene shows that Papageno and Papagena have had several children together, just like they planned to in their duet.
• Big Eater: Papageno quickly helps himself to Pamina’s food table after sneaking into Sarastro’s temple. In fairness, the three ladies hadn’t given him anything to properly eat earlier...
• Call-Back: Tamino — a medieval warrior — playing chess during the intermission might be Ingmar Bergman referencing a certain previous film of his.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The black-wearing Queen of the Night and her three maidens try presenting themselves as such, though they turn out to be Evil All Along. Played straight with Sarastro’s temple guards, however.
• Dragons Prefer Princesses: Gender-Inverted Trope, as the serpent the three ladies rescue Prince Tamino from has been replaced by a dragon, complete with a mouthful of pyrotechnics.
• Early-Bird Cameo: During Papageno's song, Papagena is briefly shown watching him from backstage, smiling impishly when he laments that he doesn't have a woman to share his life with.
• Evil Living Flames: The trial of fire is presented as a walk through a fiery cavern filled with strange, humanoid figures.
• Failed a Spot Check: Papageno somehow doesn’t notice the dead dragon lying in plain view until Tamino points it out. He still tries to take credit for slaying it, which the three ladies immediately call him out on.
• Just in Time: Played for Laughs, and sort of a meta Establishing Character Moment for Papageno. When his first scene comes up, it's revealed that he's fallen asleep backstage. He wakes up just as the intro music begins playing, and has to rush to get his costume properly on, runs past the stage hands, pauses twice to do the little pan flute call at the right times, is handed his birdcages and staff by some extras, whom he blows a kiss to before he darts onstage just in time to sing his first lines.
• Parental Bonus:
  • Papageno and Papagena undressing each other during their duet. It’s played rather innocently, and they only go as far as taking off their winter clothes, but the connotations are hard to miss for older audiences.
  • Mixed with Parent Service, the three ladies get quite handsy with Tamino during the opening number, and later try to seduce him and Papageno while wearing short-sleeved dresses which — while unremarkable today — are implied to be rather raunchy in this quasi-medieval setting.
• People in Rubber Suits: The dragon, the forest animals and Sarastro’s lions.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Amongst the forest animals — such as a bear, a wolf and a pair of rabbits — there are also, inexplicably, a turtle and a walrus!
• Nightmare Face: During her famous aria, the Queen’s face turns ghastly pale, making her look like a wrathful ghoul.
• No Fourth Wall: The singers are shown relaxing offstage between the acts.
• Nothing but Skulls: The three ladies bring out two clattering skulls each in an attempt to frighten our heroes.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Papageno somehow manages to get right back into Pamina’s Gilded Cage garden right after Monostatos throws him out.
• Reaction Shot: The overtune is set to shots of the In-Universe audience, perfectly synched to the store. In particular, there is a young girl who appears throughout the film, serving as a bit of an Audience Surrogate. ^note  Despite what some sources claim, she was not played by Bergman’s daughter, but by child actress Helene Friberg.
• Lost in Character: Played for Laughs. The cast are shown to still be somewhat in character during the intermission. Sarastro’s councilmen are having an intellectual discussion, Tamino and Pamina are playing chess together, the ”evil” Queen is smoking right next to a ”no smoking” sign, and the dragon is still walking around backstage in full costume long after their death.
• Setting Update: While the opera is technically supposed to be set in Ancient Egypt, Bergman goes for more of a Medieval European Fantasy setting.
• Spooky Photographs: The Queen gives Tamino a moving image of her daughter Pamina. The scary part comes when Monostatos is seen creeping up on the young woman, who looks quite frightened.
• Shout-Out: During the intermission, Sarastro is shown reading Parzival, while a boy jester is reading a Donald Duck comic.
• Stylistic Suck: The practical effects are deliberately made to be very theatrical and obvious in how they were achieved. Ingmar Bergman had fallen in love not just with The Magic Flute as a story but specifically with its form as an opera on stage, and wanted to replicate that as closely as possible.
• Villainous Harlequin: Monostatos and his cronies wear jester suits which are Red and Black and Evil All Over.

Tropes present in the 2006 film

• Actually, I Am Him: When Tamino arrives at Sarastro’s camp/shelter/hospital, a random guy among the workers asks him about his purpose in coming there and tells him Sarastro isn’t as bad as Tamino believes him to be. Later, Tamino sees that same guy greeted with an enormous cheer of "All hail to Sarastro!"
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Pamina says: "A complete stranger fell in love with me on the strength of nothing but a picture? But that’s silly". Papageno convinces her that Love at First Sight is possible.
  • Two officers (the two priests from the original opera) call Sarastro out on his manipulation of Tamino, something that never happens in the original (the only somewhat corresponding scene has the priests worried Tamino is too pampered to pass the trials).
  • During the famous second aria of the Queen, we are shown flashbacks of her past romance with Sarastro.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Tamino is a soldier rather than a prince, and Papageno uses birds to detect poison gas rather than selling them. All the priests are replaced with soldiers.
• Adaptational Diversity: Many of Sarastro’s people, including the two priests (here officers), are given a Race Lift, and there are cheerful interracial couples shown in the flute-playing scene. This way, while Monostatos still complains he is denied love because of his race, it’s made clear he is just making excuses for himself rather than actually telling the truth about the setting's racism.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Papageno first sees Papagena several years before the plot begins (although only briefly, and he doesn’t learn her name until Sarastro’s officers tell him).
• Adaptational Mundanity: Though most of the magical elements are retained, there are still some examples of this trope.
  • The giant serpent has been changed to a cloud of poisonous gas, which Tamino refers to as "the Angel of Death".
  • Instead of some mystical elemental trials, here the trial of fire means walking under gunfire and the water for the trial of water is just poured down by Monostatos from some reservoir.
  • Instead of falling into literal infinite night because of sunlight, the villains are all Driven to Suicide and let themselves fall from the wall.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Sarastro is a lot less distant and Holier Than Thou than in the original, and his misogynistic attitude is gone. He also personally encourages Tamino and Pamina right before the trials and rushes to help them in the trial of water (though by the time he reaches them, they are done with it).
  • In the original, Papageno promises to be faithful to the old lady – Aside Glance – until he finds someone prettier. Here, it’s omitted, and he promises to be faithful to her and none other by the life of his birds.
• Adaptational Timespan Change: The final chorus scene takes place a couple of years after the villains’ death rather than immediately afterwards. Justified, since, first, it takes a while for hostilities to end even if we suppose the Queen was their main instigator, second, Sarastro is devastated by the Queen's suicide and definitely doesn’t feel like celebrating.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Sarastro hits Monostatos with one after demoting him for assaulting Pamina.
  Monostatos: But sir, but sir, I followed all the laws!
  Sarastro: No, friend, you only followed yours!
• Babies Ever After: In the final scene, set a couple of years later, Tamino and Pamina have a baby son and Papagena is pregnant.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Downplayed. Pamina calls her father Sarastro right before the trial of fire, but it is left ambiguous on whether she is at that point aware of the relationship. When she is telling Tamino her father carved the magic flute, we are shown Sarastro doing it, but it is unclear on whether Pamina knows it was him.
• Church of Saint Genericus: Whatever Sarastro’s religion is. In his second-act aria, where his counterpart from the original prays to Isis and Osiris, he prays to the "Spirit of our fathers". Then he mentions giving the wounded soldiers "true faith again", but never elaborates on the faith itself, and in the trio, he says "if God should will it". It’s hinted it might be some ecumenical belief he practises for the sake of the people of different cultures and religions that live in his camp.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The Queen’s soldiers have blue uniforms and Sarastro’s soldiers wear red.
• Composite Character: The Speaker turns out to be Sarastro himself.
• Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: The misogynistic and racist elements of the libretto are removed here.
• Death by Adaptation: Unlike the source material, all of the villains meet their demise here (see below).
• Disney Villain Death: At the end, the Queen, the Ladies, and Monostatos allow themselves to fall down from the wall after climbing up Sarastro's castle.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Inverted. While in the original Sarastro punishes Monostatos with seventy-seven lashes, here he simply demotes him to corporal, for Attempted Rape of Sarastro’s own daughter, no less. It’s shown that it’s not that Sarastro doesn’t care for Pamina or is okay with her getting assaulted – he just believes in redemption that much.
• Evil Laugh: Monostatos cackles evilly once he has Pamina and Papageno cornered.
• Foreshadowing: One of the lines of the Queen's first aria, in which she asks Tamino to rescue her daughter, is translated as "I will command her to be yours". This is the first sign that the Queen doesn't care for Pamina's own feelings that much.
• Literal-Minded: We get this gem from Papageno when he delivers the message to Pamina.
  Pamina: Well?
  Papageno: I'm okay.
  Pamina: Your message!
• Non-Action Guy: Papageno, as in the original. "Fighting isn’t really my thing."
• Noodle Incident: We never learn why, exactly, Sarastro and the Queen have quarrelled so bitterly. The flashbacks show their romantic relationship started as very happy.
• Not Wearing Tights: Because of the new setting, Papageno doesn't wear a feathery bird costume here. His wardrobe has been simplified to a blue longcoat (his army uniform) and a helmet topped with a fake bird.
• Old Flame: Sarastro still harbours feelings for the Queen, despite them being on the opposite sides of the war and her trying to plot his murder. When she kills herself, he is heartbroken.
• Quirky Curls:
  • Papagena has a mass of tightly coiled curls to match her cheerful prankster personality.
  • Downplayed with Pamina, whose curls are less unruly than Papagena’s but still a far cry from the Regal Ringlets in Bergman’s film, and she is an easy-going Rebellious Princess.
• Recycled In Space: The plot is now set in (vaguely) World War I.
• Redemption Rejection: Sarastro is willing to give the Queen and her soldiers a chance till the very last moment, but it turns out they prefer death.
• Song of Prayer: The film makes "O Isis and Osiris" a Church of Saint Genericus prayer to the "Spirit of our fathers", where Sarastro and the people living in his camp/hospital/shelter pray for Tamino and Pamina and for an end of a terrible war.
• Time-Shifted Actor: In a sense. Old!Papagena is played by 85-year-old Liz Smith and young!Papagena is played and sung by 28-year-old Silvia Moi.
• War Is Hell: Sarastro’s main motivation in this movie is to end the terrible war that has claimed countless lives.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final chorus is sung when a couple of years have passed in-universe, and we see the people from Sarastro’s shelter enjoying the peaceful life.