Description:

A poor peasant lad befriends a snake, obtains a magic ring and decides to marry the princess, but the princess has other ideas. Based on the Pomor (Russian far north) folk take recorded and then rewritten by Boris Shergin.

This is a very old folk tale that is widespread among Indo-European people; #560 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (go here to read various versions of it). The history of it in Russia can be read here - it was first recorded in 1804, and subsequently appeared in varying versions in different folklore collections. A version recorded on an ethnographic expedition by Boris Shergin was published in a book by Olga Ozarovskaya in 1931. Then in 1936, Shergin wrote and published another version in his own characteristic style. The 1931 version can be read here, and the 1936 version here. Koval and Nosyrev's screenplay for this animated film uses a mix of both versions (one notable detail from 1936 that didn't make it into the film: the snake is not "the daughter of the Snake Tsar", but an American lady serving a year's punishment as a snake for failing to pay a million-dollar debt).

The first version of the screenplay was not accepted by Goskino, with following objection being given: "The script is based on a fairy tale, the plot of which has been repeatedly used in various film productions. In addition, the target audience of the script is completely unclear: the plot and the characters of the tale seem to be designed for a child audience, but the very specific language, overloaded with the Pomor dialect, will not always be understood even by an adult."

For the second version of the screenplay, "revised in accordance with the recommendations of Goskino", the characteristic features of Shergin's language were removed, and in this form the script was accepted by the Committee. However, later, when recording the voices, Nosyrev restored the vocabulary of the source material and submitted the finished film without any revisions.

Because the language is non-standard, there are two versions of the Russian subtitles - an "actual" version (in which the words are transcribed as they are spoken) and a "literary" version (in which the words are changed from the Pomor dialect to how they would sound in modern standard Russian).

The film was well-received and won some awards. It was later included in Nosyrev's excellent 1987 feature, "Laughter and Grief by the White Sea".

The first video above is the 2019 HD scan in the original frame rate (24fps). The second video is the older scan in the slightly-too-fast 25fps TV frame rate, but more saturated colours.

Awards:
1979 - The Magic Ring - Silver Medal "For the Best Fairy Tale" at the IFF in Odense, 1980;
1980 - 2nd All-Union Film Festival in Dushanbe - 2nd Prize to actor Yevgeniy Leonov for the portrayal of the narrator in the film "The Magic Ring".