Description:

A boastful titmouse announces that she will set the sea on fire, and the world gathers to watch. Based on the children's poem by Ivan Krylov.

The original poem (written in 1811), and an English translation by Guy Daniels, can be read here. The English subtitles differ in places from Daniels' translation in an attempt to be closer to the original text.

There is a fair amount of Disney influence here in the character designs and some of the animation. For example, the turtle's run may be familiar to those who've seen Disney's 1935 "The Tortoise and the Hare".

This was Pashchenko's first film since the critically-acclaimed (but little-seen) "Jabzha" from 1938, which had been made at Lenfilm - in the interim, he had started working on "The Song of Joy", but had been unable to finish it due to Hitler's invasion of the USSR and the subsequent Siege of Leningrad, during which many of his studio colleagues died and animation ultimately stopped being produced in Leningrad entirely for half a century. Along with those of his colleagues who survived, he moved to Moscow and Soyuzmultfilm, which before the war had had a very different style, with its films much more influenced by Disney. The second director, Aleksandr Ivanov, had used the Disney style in his films since the mid-1930s, and kept using it until he was forced to change in the late 1940s (when relations between the USSR and the USA deteriorated), starting with the film "Polkan and Shavka". As for Pashchenko, after this collaboration he resumed work on his previous project with a new team at this new studio, and "The Song of Joy" was ultimately released in 1946 to great acclaim.