"Culture" Channel
presents
Weightless Life
OLEG ANOFRIYEV Actor
All on Earth has its secret birth.
Poetry, for example.
Animation also has its secret birth.
It is this secret which we will try to reveal to you
in this unusual film about the creation of Soviet Russian animation.
Dialogue With Disney
People in this film:
Oleg Anofriyev - actor, has voiced many animated characters.
Iosif Boyarskiy - director, animation historian. Many directors have learned from his books.
Fyodor Khitruk - director. His "Winnie-the-Pooh" has been hailed by Disney animators.
Yuriy Norshteyn - director. His "Hedgehog in the Fog" has topped a list of the world's best animation.
Inessa Kovalevskaya - director. Her "Bremen Musicians" became the first Soviet animated musical.
Aleksandr Kurlyandskiy - writer. Many generations have watched his serial "You Just Wait!"
Aleksandr Tatarskiy - director. He developed the technique of flat plasticine animation.
Strange though it may be, the studio Soyuzmultfilm owes its existence to Walt Disney
There's no shame in learning from the greats.
How to apply that knowledge is a different question.
In the early 1930s, it was decided that the country should industrialize.
Film had to also become "an industry".
The country needed a "Soviet Hollywood".
The physicist Pyotr Kapitsa went to England,
The steel founders were sent to Germany,
And the management of the photo- film industry sent its representative Viktor Smirnov to the US.
In order to learn about methods for creating films.
He spent several months at Disney's studio, and fell in love with his animation assembly line.
Henry Ford, the inventor of the assembly line,
unsuspectingly gave Disney the hint of how to speed up the production of films:
put them on an assembly line!
IOSIF BOYARSKIY director
There were two Disney brothers.
They saw that the assembly line method is more progressive
and they applied this method,
and they also separated the production process
The story, the director's script,
the concept artists,
and everything after that is divided between workshops
the animation workshop; drawn acting,
technical helpers, who draw the in-between drawings,
a line workshop, a drawing-on-celluloid workshop,
and painting the celluloid.
One for film developing, another for sound, and so on.
N. Khodatayev "Interplanetary Revolution", 1924
In our country at that time, animation was made by numerous small studios.
Such a studio would make 1-2 films a year.
The public liked them, but the speed of the output pleased no-one.
Animated production had to be quicker.
The factory-like Disney working method was very fitting for this.
But a big factory was needed for it!
And soon a decision was made to combine the small studios into one big one.
That is how Soyuzmultfilm was born.
FYODOR KHITRUK director
I came to the studio at the end of 1937, when it was barely a year old.
I know where the studio began - in Kudrinskaya Square, Novinskiy Boulevard
Every time I drive by, I feel like I'm back at the house of my birth.
I had a completely different conception of a film studio.
Like any unenlightened person, I thought that a film studio was something exotic,
that there had to be decorations everywhere,
cranes, stage lights, cinematographers running around everywhere...
Nothing of the sort!
"We Don't Bite Here"
There was a long corridor, with door signs like "We Don't Bite Here", "It's Hot in Africa",
"Little Liar", "Kind Umar", these were director's groups.
My first film was called "A Noisy Voyage".
I adore this film; I watch it every week at least once.
V. Suteyev "A Noisy Voyage", 1937
These films were begun on small studios before Soyuzmultfilm's arrival,
and the Disney-inspired technological changes hadn't yet touched them.
When I arrived, they still used expressions like:
These were copied from the technical manual which was translated
on the orders of Viktor Fyodorovich Smirnov.
They completely changed the technology.
Earlier, each phase of movement was drawn on paper,
cut out, and put in front of the background.
You can imagine, no-one talked of any plasticity or 3D movement.
Now they decided to switch to celluloid
and this greatly bolstered all animators.
One could move characters in any fashion, use 3D space,
This was a Klondike for animators.
V. + Z. Brumberg "Red Riding Hood", 1937
Grandma, what a big, scary mouth you have!
The better to eat you with!
Animators were shaken up, working at the new studio.
They had to forget about past technologies,
and make films exclusively in Disney's style.
A Most Colourful Tale About a Duckling and a Rainbow
A Duck Comedy
A cartoon must be funny! Nothing but the comedy genre.
Nothing lyrical, no drama, and so a conflict arose in our animation,
between the Russian craving for self-expression and Disney's style.
Naturally, there were losses.
Though we acquired unbelievable freedom and plasticity of movement,
we could previously use our treasure trove of children's book illustrations.
Such geniuses as Lebedev, Cherushin, Favorskiy,
could not be shown on celluloid because the even, hard pen
did not allow us to reproduce this astounding texture of the illustrations.
Aleksandr Tatarskiy Director
One thing that Disney definitely lacked was design.
His design is primitive, on the level of soap commercials.
But it didn't take long for Smirnov to make our artists do it Disney's way.
His films were already at the peak of their public popularity.
In 1935, the first international film festival took place in Moscow
and 3 of Disney's films were shown:
"Peculiar Penguins", "Mickey's Revue" and "The Three Little Pigs"
All of Moscow, back then, was singing the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
The Happy Generation
Even directors who'd made more than one film at the new studio
began to make films "� la Disney"
Ivan Ivanov-Vano, for the film "Little Liar"
adopted a famous Disney character.
I remember, as a trainee, I was assigned a scene with a duckling,
and this duckling was an unsuccessful imitation of Donald Duck.
I. Ivanov-Vano "Little Liar", 1938
Tell me please, is that monster your dog?
Yes; once I had to go on a hunt at the end of winter.
Not enough action! Not enough action!
Everyone repeated the mantra: A film must be funny!
But the question of why it must be funny was never asked.
If Disney does it this way, then so must we.
Each one of us strove to think of something.
This was like a kind of sport.
And this was imperative - we had to imbue the characters
with some interesting events and tricks
Aleksandr Kurlyandskiy scriptwriter
We did not have a "gagman" profession.
So for one "gag" we could work a whole day, or even more.
Every story point had to be funnily conveyed.
"How to Invent a Funny Trick?"
Meetings were held in the famed studio,
caricaturists, circus workers and humour writers were invited,
and each "trick" that they invented was paid for.
I remember returning from one of these gag meetings
Vladimir Grigoryevich Suteyev gave me 20 cents.
This was a premium.
Nowadays people guess for 3 million,
but back then these 20 cents were dear to me.
Such meetings were also imitations of Disney,
whose whole studio was inventing gags.
In other words, tricks and funny situations.
W. Disney "Steamboat Willie", 1928
But no matter how much we racked our brains thinking up gags,
audiences still had no belly laughs during our films.
And understandably; Russian and American animation have different roots.
American animation was born from comics,
from humourous pictoral stories.
They appeared in America in the 19th century as additions to newspapers.
In this way, publishers made immigrants and the illiterate buy the periodicals.
Later, comics came to life, and American animation was born.
O. Messmer "Woos Whoopee", 1930
Soviet animation got started with parody and propaganda posters.
Dziga Vertov can be called the first Soviet animator.
While working on "Cinema Eye", he began to animate.
The films made were mostly of a political nature;
"Down With the Second International", "China in Flames"
"How Avdotya Became Literate"
and other socio-political themes like that.
But gradually, propaganda films were replaced by children's cartoons.
Directors began paying attention to the artistic side of animation.
Yuriy Norshteyn director
Tsekhanovskiy immediately made an unbelievable film: "Post",
based on Marshak's poems.
One must also note that Marshak's poem itself is very elastic,
and this is reflected in the film.
M. Tsekhanovskiy "Post", 1929
"Post" was and remains a Soviet classic.
"Post" is among the best of the best of children's cinematography.
And then he started a film called
"The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda"
It was supposed to include the music of Shostakovich.
Do you see what a level animation had attained, what culture,
if the genius Shostakovich saw in it
unbelievable compositional opportunities for himself.
M. Tsekhanovsiy "The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda", 1933
And so the imposition of the Disney style
again made our animation indistinguishable and unexpressive.
Disney himself helped us to cross-examine his style,
with his films "Snow White" and "Bambi".
He understood that the viewer was tired of watching comics;
it was time to wow him with realism.
Disney decided to draw Snow White as a pretty young girl,
and make her move like a regular person, not as the traditional Disney character.
W. Disney "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", 1937
And Bambi, made during early WW2, impressed the world even more.
NAPOLEON I
L. Amalrik "Film Circus", 1942
Soviet animators did things like in a circus,
while Disney, filming stories about a calf
whose mother died from a hunter's bullet,
was able to comment on the horrors of war and death.
D. Hand "Bambi", 1942
"Bambi" became the iconic anti-war film.
and forced our animators to reflect on the fact that they
had become too engrossed in others' accomplishments,
and had forgotten about finding art.
L. Almarik, V. Polkovnikov "The Little Grey Neck", 1948
Soon, we too began to make films
which did not try to induce laughter by any means possible.
After artists came back from WW2,
they submerged themselves into a completely peaceful world.
There is nothing more peaceful than talking with or drawing for children.
And so there suddenly appeared a huge number of films exclusively for children.
Amelrik and Polkovnikov's "The Little Grey Neck"
became a revelation for the whole world,
and Ivanov-Vano's 1947 "The Little Humpbacked Horse"
was shown by Disney to his workers as an example to learn from.
after such a success, as is typical in our country,
we went from worshipping Disney to completely shunning him.
Fyodor Khitruk director
We even had the following curious thesis:
"We long ago overtook Disney!
Because he lives under capitalism, and we're already under socialism."
Disney's main work consists of one genre: comedy for children.
Soviet animation took a different view of children's cinema
Iosif Boyarskiy director
The main task became pedagogical:
The moral and artistic education of children.
Inessa Kovalyovskaya director
For children, animation is not mere fun and games,
it is the discovery of the world.
We turned away from the Disney style,
and our animation began producing such insightful films as
Lev Atamanov's "The Snow Queen",
Roman Kachanov's "Mitten",
Fyodor Khitruk's "Boniface's Holiday"
Pope John Paul II once said,
"if you want your children to obtain a high spiritual education,
show them Soviet animated films."
In the 50s and 60s, Soyuzmultfilm turned its attention to films for adults.
Parables are made, satirical portraits, philosophical metaphors,
like Khrzanovsky's "Glass Harmonica",
or Fyodor Khitruk's "History of a Crime".
This is a different cinema,
which thinks of people using different forms.
Only once did Disney decide to make a film for the adult viewer.
It is called "Fantasia". It's a big film of about 2 hours.
where Stokowski conducts an orchestra
and makes these novellas to the music.
W. Disney "Fantasia", 1940
The novellas are very closely tied to the music.
The idea is very interesting, original, and very impressive.
He already had that abstract animation which is now talked about.
He did Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"
Huge boulders, the birth of volcanoes, and of the Earth.
It is done in a very unusual manner.
The film flopped,
and Disney never again made films for adults.
His opinion about our own abundance of genres was blunt:
"One whose profession was finding novelty would find it interesting,
but how would one sell it? It is only experimentation."
And he continued to turn out family films in the familiar style.
"Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty",
Now his films impressed in terms of money,
with their cost and high box-office gross.
If 150 artists worked on "Cinderella", 300 would work on "Sleeping Beauty"
If the press called "Cinderella" the most profitable film of the decade,
"Sleeping Beauty" would become the emblem of the studio.
Disney's children's films and our own were now completely different.
Cartoons about Winnie-the-Pooh were released by us and Disney
almost at the same time.
But he was not a very smart bear, and so thought only with great effort.
He was a poet, and composed poems in his free time.
I can't think of anything. What about you?
If I scratch my head at times, it's no fright.
I have sawdust in my head, that's quite right.
But though sawdust's all that's there,
cry- and wail-poems very fair
(and noise-, huff- and bawl- poems, also fair)
with some skill I sometimes can write.
Right.
Compared to Disney, Khitruk's Winnie-the-Pooh is considerably
more interesting and brighter.
Aleksandr Tatarskiy director
Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh was genuine to Milne.
The English writer.
But Khitruk's Pooh was completely different - a charming philosopher,
and not simply someone who likes to gorge on food.
I once showed my... our Pooh at Disney,
to the creator of the Disney Winnie-the-Pooh.
He liked our version.
Around that time, Soyuzmultfilm put up an unofficial ban on the use of the Disney style and genre.
The directors were scared stiff of allowing Disney-ification to take over the studio again.
Even in those films which required characters in the Disney style,
authors were persistently told to change their character and plot.
Dyozhkin's "Unbelievable Match" and "Shaybu! Shaybu!"
were met with raised bayonets at the studio.
After seeing them, Disney invited the director to work for his studio.
Boris refused. Series were not his thing.
Why, they were very good series. Wonderful series, I think.
Our "You Just Wait!" came from them. One should know this. It was a good idea.
The first installments of "You Just Wait" were badly received by the masters of Soyuzmultfilm.
Aleksandr Kurlyandskiy scriptwriter
it all started at the series "The Happy Merry-Go-Round",
with small, roughly 1-minute films. There were three of them.
There was a different wolf and a different hare.
G. Sokolskiy "You Just Wait!", 1969
They were successful, and they gave us the opportunity to make a big 10-minute film.
We never foresaw such a runaway hit, of course.
Behind the Iron Curtain, and with the full absence of any American films, it stood alone.
Of course people would like it.
If "Tom and Jerry", which is just like "You Just Wait", had been shown at that time,
nobody would've watched "You Just Wait".
"You Just Wait!"
And that's how it was.
Through these constant arguments, our animation was born and lived.
In 2003, at the Tokyo Laputa festival,
the most prominent cinematographers from across the globe
chose 150 of the best animated films from all eras and nations.
Among these 150, 11 were from the Soyuzmultfilm studio,
and only four films from Disney's studio.
The top two were "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "Tale of Tales".
It would seem that our animation had forever forsaken the Disney style,
But lately, the animators of the 2000s are trying to resurrect the dialogue with Disney.
Disney is long gone, as are his students. See over there -
I have a poster with my friends, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston,
the greatest of Disney's animators,
When they were still alive, animation was crystal-clear.
Fyodor Khitruk director
Now it is becoming crafty, and not as clean as it once was
during the time of Disney's "Snow White".
Our animation is becoming commercial.
Just as at the dawn of American animation, it tries as hard as it can to make people laugh.
And so Alyosha began to learn the military business.
K. Bronzit "Alosha", 2004
The defenders of our older animated films call this a return to animating comics.
They say that we need to return to the better aspects of Soviet animation.
That for Russians, copying Disney is already a dead end.
Script and direction Lyubov Khobotova
Cameramen: Aleksandr Komov, Vyacheslav Sachkov, Denis Katurga
Editing Sergey Garkavy
Computer graphics: Sergey Garkavy, Dmitriy Vasilyev
Sound: Pavel Dudin Narrator: Oleg Anofriyev
Artist: Anna Pinchuk Editor: Viktoriya Belopolskaya
Producer: Yevgeniy Sulla Consultants: Larisa Layukova,
Inessa Kovalevskaya, Fyodor Khitruk, Iosif Boyarskiy
Appeared in film: Iosif Boyarskiy, Fyodor Khitruk, Aleksandr Tatarskiy,
Aleksandr Kurlyandskiy, Yuriy Norshteyn, Inessa Kovalyova, Leonid Shvartsman
Film fragments from: N. Mayorov, F. Khitruk,
A. Tatarskiy, V. Pugashkin, A. Petrov, I. Kaplichnaya,
A. Kurlyandskiy, Y. Norshteyn, E. Nazarov, A. Kirakosyan,
G. Bardin, I. Kovalevskaya, L. Malyukova, I. Maksimov,
Private archives of: A. Atamanova, E. Nazarov, F. Khitruk,
I. Boyarskiy, I. Kovalevskaya, V. Pugashkin, G. Borodin,
L. Shvartsman, A. Kirakosyan, N. Abramova, A. Petrov,
N. Mayorov, V. Shilobreyev, Y. Nesterova, E. Vakhurina
Material from "First in Cinema", an unpublished book by N. Mayorov, is used in the film
Studio CBC would like to thank F. and A. Vyrskiy, V. Kuzmin, T. Petrov, Y. Zaytsev,
L. Soldatenkov, O. Kuznetsov, A. Velikokhodny, Studio Soyuzmultfilm,
special thanks to A. Kirakosyan, the A.V.Shchusev architecture museum, and D. Sarkisyan
Studio CBC for Culture Channel, 2006