The Daydreamer 1966

Teenage Hans Christian Andersen, the son of a poor shoemaker, spends more time daydreaming than studying and ultimately runs away from home. Whether he’s awake or asleep, his mind carries him into fantastical adventures that feel almost as large as life itself. In his dreams, he encounters a colorful cast: two swindling tailors, a tiny girl no bigger than a thumb, a mermaid, a devil boy in Eden, and others who seem to spring straight from a storybook. The dream sequences unfold as puppet animation, bringing these notions to life with a sense of whimsy and danger. A puppet version of Andersen himself appears alongside the Pieman, creating a surreal stage within the dream world.

In the waking world, the plots begin to resemble the kinds of tales he would later write. Hans is falsely arrested for poaching by a game warden and is sent to chop wood as punishment. His father, Jack Gilford as Papa Andersen, who has been out searching for his son, is arrested as well—also for fishing in protected waters—and forced to chop wood. The two endure hard labor side by side until release comes, when the father relinquishes a ring he wore from his past marriage, breaking the cycle of punishment and reuniting father and son.

These intertwined experiences—dream and reality—become fertile ground for Andersen’s later fairy tales, shaping the imaginative world he would later populate with remarkable characters and moral puzzles. From the dream-sculpted visions to the real-world trials, the stories that emerge are both personal and universal, touching on longing, cleverness, and the wish to find a paradise of one’s own.

• The Little Mermaid

• Thumbelina

• The Ugly Duckling

• The Emperor’s New Clothes

• Little Claus and Big Claus

• The Garden of Paradise

Thumbelina and The Little Mermaid stand out as vivid anchors from the dream sequences, while The First Tailor and The Second Tailor appear as the two swindling cutters of cloth in those early visions, and The Pieman looms large in the puppet-filled demonstrations of fantasy. The film stitches together these threads into a portrait of a writer whose imagination is inseparable from the hardships and joys of his early years.