The Snow Queen

That Frozen became a success is a fact, that antiheroine with fears more typical of adults captivated children and grown ups but although it is a pretty modern film, it had been brewing in the guts of Disney since the 40s with several attempts to be carried out to the present day.

It was while Walt Disney was still alive that the studios wanted to adapt one of what is considered to be one of Hans Christian Andersen's best short stories, The Snow Queen, but due to the darkness of the story and the complexity of the character, the project was forgotten in the archives.

According to his biographer Andersen may have been inspired by "the heart of ice" of Jenny Lind, a Swedish soprano with whom Andersen was in love and who never returned his feelings but that heart of ice would have been too cold for the public to empathize with Disney's Elsa.

For this, he had to be a character full of lights and shadows for whom a much more dramatic image was first designed with blue hair and a way of acting inspired by Amy Winehouse but in the end, and after a trip to Scandinavia, that served as inspiration for the costumes and image for the characters as well as for buildings and exteriors, a more Nordic image with braids was decided for which the Hollywood stylist Danilo created styles adapted to the evolution of the character from fear and self-control to her liberation.

"I made her a little punky and gave her a pompadour" Danilo

The stylist claims that all his work with Gwen Stefani over the years was very useful to create hair that reflected Elsa's emotions and changes, but such hair was difficult to animate. Those 400,000 strands had to have the help from sophisticated animation softwares.

In order to carry out the story successfully the key was in Anna ... In Andersen's original story, it is Gerda who sets out on a journey to free her friend Kai, kidnapped by the Snow Queen, but in Frozen it is Anna who sets out on a journey in search of her sister who would also be the alter ego of The Snow Queen but perhaps also of Kai kidnapping herself for fear of her powers.

And it is that in the end when we are children the demons we fear are outside, while when we grow up those demons begin to be inside of us and like Elsa we must learn to accept and control them. That is where the true power of Frozen resides and captivates people of all ages with its Snow Queen.