An often-beautiful Russian stop motion-animated feature film based on Andersen's fairy tale using the music of Tchaikovsky (and a heavy dose of "chipped-shoulder Russian intelligentsia" subtext, if one chooses to notice it).

I originally made the English subtitles back in 2010, but they were only shown in one place as far as I know. I think translation-wise it's some of my better work. This film mostly consists of songs, and I managed to translate them entirely in the same rhyming meter while keeping the meaning very close to the original words. Even if "official" subtitles turn up somewhere else, this is probably better.

Opinions about this film among Russian viewers (at least judging by the comments on RuTracker) seem to be extremely polarized with very little middle ground or respect of those with the opposite view. As one person summed it up, if you don't like the film you are apparently "idiotic cattle", and if you like it you are a "member of the intelligentsia prone to sentimentality and a love of vengeance". Of those with children, most mentioned that their children liked it even if they themselves were more ambivalent. As for myself (leaving aside questions of art design and animation quality, which are great throughout), I think it has both some really wonderful parts (especially closer to the end) as well as some questionable ones. There is a bit too much repetitiveness in the middle. I do definitely think that the director was or is bitter at the society he lives in and that this made its way into the film, but in some places the film really rises above that and in others it doesn't. Where it doesn't is where I think viewer perceptions seem to become polarized... which may be why a number of commentators have written that this film is like a mirror.

>>2
>I appreciate you linking the translated fable
Sure, I always try to link to the literary source and its translation if I can find them.

I really love this film - it has been one of my favourites from the studio for years. But it wasn't online for the longest time. The use of light and depth is wonderful, and I recognize much of what it shows as happy (or not so happy) childhood memories. Probably it's not so much a children's film, though it's from the perspective of a child. Also, it doesn't seem to have an especially happy ending... actually, it seems downright tragic, although I couldn't find anybody anywhere discussing it. My interpretation is that it suddenly jumps forward a decade or two, to a decidedly less happy time - and the whole preceding film is perhaps the young lad's last, favourite memory.

It's a shame that the director made no other films. But some others it reminds me of are:

The Lodgers of an Old House (1988)
Forest Tales (1997)
There Lived a Tree (1996)

I appreciate you linking the translated fable

The main part of this film has no dialogue - probably to help with "international appeal". But even though I found it possible to follow the story if I watched carefully, even though I was unfamiliar with the world, it did take a major effort... and I think the film would have been stronger and more popular with viewers if characters were allowed to talk in the normal way.

>>1
Oh, yes, clearly. Though the Kangaroo is an Australian animal, it looks like the director chose to give him Black African facial features here. Although she says that the model for his face was Adriano Celentano in the 1980 film "The Taming of the Scoundrel". To me, the scowling facial close-ups make the kangaroo look like a not-very-smart bully, and his genteel voice (once he finally speaks) does not seem to fit. But I guess the director likes the type, and she says (in that article) that the duck is like herself.
The portrait on the wall is of Vladimir Vysotsky, an excellent Soviet musician and actor who died young due to ruining his health with heavy alcohol, tobacco and drug use. He was meant to be the original voice for the wolf in "Nu, pogodi". He once starred in an excellent film ("How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor", for which I made subtitles some years ago) where he played in blackface as Pushkin's African great-grandfather.

Another thing I noticed is that as soon as the Kangaroo agrees to allow the duck to tag along and sets off, the duck immediately breaks all the promises she made; she ditches the socks and cigars, and dances all over him instead of staying on the end of his tail as he asked. I guess the subtext here is "make whatever silly promises are necessary to get the other party to commit, because you'll never need to actually keep them"?

In my own opinion, the theme of this film is about inter-racial marriages in an open society. And here is a short article about it !

This honestly seems more like an American cartoon of the time to me. Besides the visual style, it's the heavily religious framing, and the focus on entertainment without worrying about any deeper moral or idea. I guess controls on the periphery were less stringent.

Dyozhkin's original drawings were notoriously "rough", and could look quite different in the end based on how they were polished up. I think this art direction team was one of the less successful ones (while those who handled his hockey films were among the best).

Another excellent adaptation of this tale was made by Roman Kachanov, director of "Cheburashka" and "Secret of the Third Planet": The Last Petal (1977). Unlike this one, it stays true to the ending of the original story and the girl does not get an extra magical flower at the end.