A fairy tale, a musical. The film adaptation of the famous novel by the English writer Jonathan Swift "Gulliver's Travels", staged by the equally famous Soviet director Alexander Ptushko, who gave us adaptations of such fairy tales as "Ruslan and Lyudmila", "Sadko", "Ilya Muromets", "The Tale of Lost Time". And since I am not familiar with the original book source, therefore I will evaluate the film adaptation as an independent work. And I stumbled upon this picture quite by accident when it was shown on a weekday morning on the Culture channel, and this creation made me remember the name, and later find it and still look, well, and write a review, of course. And here's my brief opinion for you - A topical adaptation of an acute social satire. I want to replace right away that there are no minuses in the picture (there are problems with sound, but for this you need to urgently restore the picture itself, because neither the songs nor the speech of the characters can practically be disassembled), so I will focus your attention on the merits. And this concludes such an important introduction, and we get to the point.
So, here they are:
1. Scenario - a young pioneer, and part-time member of the organization for the protection of life and health of citizens on the water OSVOD, as a reward for labor achievements, is given his favorite book "Gulliver's Travels", and during its reading he falls asleep, and finds himself in the country of Lilliput, which is ruled by the king and a group of his capitalist hangers-on. They reign supreme and suppress the people as much as they can, and the appearance of Gulliver disrupts the rhythm of this well-established mechanism. What kind of alien is this? Which side will he take? The authorities or the people? What should I do with him at all? How will he behave when he wakes up? All these questions flash through the minds of tyrants. But our hero is a pioneer, so his class and social position becomes clear very quickly. And from that moment on, events will happen rapidly. There will be a popular revolt, there will be conspiracies, battles on land and sea, there will be a Revolution itself, in which our hero will have to play an important role. Yes, the script is revolutionary, and somewhat unlike the acute social satire of Jonathan Swift. After all, the pioneer sees a dream in the picture, and not Swift's satire on human society (for example, English in the eighteenth century), so there is a lot of modernity in the picture (for example, tanks from the First World War and the Civil War, Jazz at the royal feast). The ending is predictable, but after all, from the first appearances of the hero we feel sympathy for him, and throughout the picture we only strengthen in them, then we look forward to the final. And the topic has not lost its acuteness, even in modern Russia, so this picture is very relevant in our current capitalist system.
2. Dolls and Actors - this picture is revolutionary not only in the scenario, but also in technical terms, because it is the first on the planet where puppet animation and live actors were combined, and this in conditions of technical power (very weak) mid-thirties city of the last century. Neither Europe nor Hollywood could do that then, but our Soviet specialists could, and even now it looks very good. I can't even imagine what a titanic work was put into this case. Hundreds of dolls, there is plasticine, and even clay. Although the dolls look creepy, I agree with that. The scenery of Lilliput itself looks great. And both external and internal. There is a striking contrast between the royal castle and the workers' factory. The workers look inconspicuous, there are almost no details in them, no one notices these irreplaceable people, everyone spits on them. But the aristocrats look very beautiful (and similar to the English of the eighteenth century), but with their external beauty, their insides are rotten, they hate and despise the workers, to whom they actually owe their well-being. Therefore, dolls and their details are also made wisely.
I would especially like to mention Gulliver in the performance of the young actor Vladimir Konstantinov, who perfectly (despite his age) played the role of a pioneer who is not alien to the interests of the workers of Lilliput. Unfortunately, he was not destined to live a long and happy life and please us with new roles. He died heroically in 1944 near Narva.
The songs are good, especially Gulliver's song. Yes, and the characters sing with soul and trembling in their hearts, and it is felt.
This film adaptation (the second in the world, after Melies' short film) was a great success both in the USSR and abroad, and it was she who became the starting point for paintings with a combination of puppet animation and live actors. I repeat, the sound urgently needs restoration. Mosfilm! Please get busy! The people demand. And show this wonderful picture on the first federal channels (which most housewives watch), so that at least they know about this masterpiece of Soviet cinema.
My rating is 9 out of 10 and my recommendation for viewing!
