An early, visually inventive film by Robert Saakyants. Quite a different style than his famous films of the 1980s, but very visually distinct all the same. This is the second film in which he used the "fox" character (the first one isn't on this site yet). It has a lot of visual experiments, but different than the ones he would use in the 1980s. Much more use of pop art and comic book art here (as in the constant use of dialogue bubbles). And rock music, of course. I think that his later films are still better, but this is an interesting one.

Two members of the crew here later became directors themselves: Gayane Martirosyan (from 1981 onwards, at Armenfilm) and Akop Kirakosyan (from 1989, at Soyuzmultfilm; he later also became head of the studio).

This entry is unusual for not having the "merry-go-round" appear in between the films, but only at the start and end. As for the films themselves, the first one is a very simple and abstract directorial debut by Gavrilko, probably the least fun of her films and interesting primarily for including the unusual music of Alfred Schnittke, who was also one of the favourite composers that Hrzhanovskiy used in his films. The second film by Gorlenko, about the crocodile and the bird, is a very hopeful representation of the Soviet ideal that nurture, not nature is what matters most (which when taken too far led to things like Lysenkoism). The film is well done but is ruined by its narrator, who sounds like a very uninterested woman who just wants to get this over with and would rather be anywhere else. I strongly suspect that the film was originally wordless, but somebody in management couldn't understand it (or thought that kids wouldn't be able to) and insisted on adding the narrator at the last minute. The last film, I think, has not much of a point to it beyond simply being extremely cutesy... it's Mazayev's first film and probably his worst. I haven't seen all of them yet, but all the others that I have seen are better.

The little heart symbol for this one was added solely on the basis of the final cartoon in this compilation by Eduard Nazarov, which is pure quality (and also the only one of his filmography that is directly set to a song, I think. His 1980s films have no off-screen music at all). The first cartoon by Leonid Kayukov, about a mean kid who ends up meeting someone he can't handle and then feels ashamed, has an art style transparently set up to appeal to little kids, and its blunt moralizing doesn't do much for me. The second film, also by Kayukov, about the clown, is pretty harmless and very short.
The film by Nazarov has excellent character design and animation, good music, and a really funny premise. Actually, it was pretty hard to translate the two opposite-words and make them rhyme in English. "delightful" and "frightful" come pretty close, but really the meanings are something like "excellent/lovely" and "awful".

I enjoy most Georgian animation of the 1950s, and this is no exception. All the human characters were rotoscoped (just like at Soyuzmultfilm in Moscow), which led to a more serious and more dramatic pace of events. Compared to many of their films before and after, Georgian animation looked pretty good in this decade, though never as good as those of the perfectionist master of the rotoscoping method, Mihail Tsehanovskiy. So it is in this film, I sometimes noticed some perspective inconsistencies between the characters and the backgrounds - but nothing major enough to ruin my enjoyment of the film. The fight with the tiger was quite well done. Perhaps the film's biggest flaw is that, while the individual scenes itself are a good pace, it feels like it skips over some scenes simply because of the 10-minute time limit. It could easily have been 20 or 30 minutes, and would have probably been better.

Also, it looks like this particular film only appeared online this year, and this is the first-ever English translation of it.

I'm not sure what original Georgian fairy tale this is based on, as the only reference to "Marekh" the sorcerer I can find is here. I do know that fairy tales usually have things happen in groups of 3, while in this case he meets only two animals on the way - this again feels like a concession to the short running time.

Besides this and the similarly memorable Niko and Nikora, animator.ru says that Georgia Film also made Kursha in the same year (remade by the studio in a very different style 30 years later), but I have been unable to find even a screenshot of that cartoon. Maybe it will turn up one day...

Concerning the involvement of Norstein in the making of this film, his own words about it in this recent interview might be of interest. Relevant excerpt (30:35-31:05):

> "Потом меня Иванов-Вано пригласил вторым режиссёром на фильм "Времена года". Это по Чайковскому, его альбом "Времена года". Я там очень... Там была художник Марина Соколова. Я там очень много как режиссёр и придумал. И кроме того я по существу был основной мультипликатор, потому что там, хотя там нас три или четыре мультипликатора, но практически 90% снято моей рукой."

> "Then, Ivanov-Vano invited me to be a second director on the film "The Seasons". It is based on Tchaikovsky, on his suite "The Seasons". The artist [maybe "art director"?] on this film was Marina Sokolova. As a director, I brought in a lot. And aside from that, I was basically the main animator, because – although there were three or four of us animators – in practice, 90% was filmed by me."

An interesting historical artifact, surprisingly well preserved (aside from the unfortunate lack of sound... I wonder if any documents survive that say what it was going to be like?). I don't, at the moment, know the reasons for why it was abandoned so close to completion. Maybe simply because socialist realism was in vogue then, and there are no penguins in the Arctic? Or maybe there was a strict deadline and they were unable to finish in time. Whatever the reason, the studio made no animated films after that year. No animation would be made in Ukraine again until 1959.

The "plot" doesn't seem to have much to it, but I'll bet the musical numbers would have done a lot to liven it up. To me, the idea of making a cartoon about a daring scientific expedition feels unusual and fresh, despite how silly the plot is.

The animation doesn't seem as nice as in The Conceited Chick (1936) by the same studio. For the human characters (at least their bodies), they clearly used rotoscoping. I'd say the overall animation quality might be somewhat better than what Georgia Film was doing at the time, a little worse than Soyuzmultfilm's average in that year, and significantly worse than the only animated film from Lenfilm, Jabzha (a gem that deserved to be distributed wider than it was).

For comparison, here are all the films from 1938 currently on the site.

The music, the screenplay, the direction and the camera work & scene layout are all pretty good. But I think the puppets and their animation lack the expressiveness to really make it work well.

There is none of the brilliant animation that can be seen in Roman Kachanov's puppet films. And no wonder, considering how rushed this production was. In the article linked above, Migunov wrote about how the team of Grigoriy Lomidze, which was working with live-action puppets and easily meeting all the deadlines (and hadn't had to set up an entire new production line), was getting all the praise from management.

He had tons of trouble getting a cast of the main character:

Besides the miniature and complex molds, we had to ensure the casting surface was flawless, as straightening was out of the question. And casting after casting failed. (We tried to find a way to manufacture rubber toys in a factory, but that required a metal mold for vulcanization, which was completely beyond our capabilities! So our only option was latex!)

I gradually began to get nervous. Deadlines were pressing, management was furious, and the workshop couldn't cope.

[...]

But finally, a more or less high-quality casting was achieved.
With bated breath, I began installation. And discovered I had miscalculated the shrinkage of the latex. It turns out that as it dries, it shrinks significantly over time: it shrinks almost twice as much. Who could have foreseen this? The mold was made with some allowance. But for the allowance to be so large...

I almost lost it. Somehow, by filing down the pins and shortening the frame levers, I managed to dress my hero. What's more, I even managed to insert a special mimic mechanism into the head, activated by a hidden screw on the back of the head. With great difficulty, the hero was born. Another problem emerged: latex can't be painted. Oil eats away at it. Gouache crumbles. Only special makeup made from pig fat or spermaceti has no effect on latex. But then again - it smears when touched.... Well, could there be a better cure for sleep?

I turned blue and my heart began to skip beats. [Studio director] Sinitsyn, as if sensing this, called me every day, several times a day, constantly taunting me with obscenities. One night (though later, at the end of filming), he got in a full charge. Burlakov - the production director of my picture - didn't have time to cut the line, but rushed to it when he realized I was about to recite my own piece. The recitation was impressive. Later, when I finished and handed in the picture, Sinitsyn told me he thought he'd dreamed the whole thing...

He was also unhappy about the animator:

Vadim Dolgikh was assigned to me - a very mediocre animator, to say the least. Lazy and lacking initiative, he brought no benefit to the film. And if he did contribute anything, it was only quantitative, but not qualitative. He was not subtle, not intuitive, not artistic. I tried to persuade Boris Dyozhkin to try moving things around. But, first of all, there was nothing to move yet. And, having familiarized himself with the armature (the spare one), he fiddled with it a little, apparently enjoying himself, but for some reason eluded any serious work.

Really a lovely tale!

The bell reminded me of a cursorily similar motif in the ending of "Lu Ling" (鹿铃, 'Deer Bell').

In that Chinese film, of course, the protagonist lets her new friend go and is left with a sweet memory instead of a bitter one.

>>4
>Are the animals in the front row caricatures of Soviet music critics from the period?
I don't know...

I think (after reading what they wrote) that both the positive and negative critics have some good points, but overall this is a decent and charming film for very little kids. I'd put it about on par with one of Kachanov's early films, "Novice" (1961). The screenplay does a good job of expanding the original basic fairy tale by giving some more characterization to the bears before the scenes with the fox happen, while the art direction does try a bit too hard to be "naturalistic".

It was a decent start to Soyuzmultfilm's puppet tradition, even if it isn't as good as the films of Starevich in the 1910s or Ptushko & co. at Mosfilm in the 1930s.