ewevrij

What an absolutely splendid satire this is. Perhaps, seeing the reviews, not for snobby Trump loving Americans. Maybe it comes to close to the fake world they think is real with them as inhabitants, but to me it does nail the world we live in to its corparate fake core. A bridge full of actors pretending to be the crew, with the real, more blue colory crew in the belly of the ship. A play of pretences sandpapering your soul with the uneasyness of mirroring reality.. Really fantastic.!! And a well casted Hugh Laurie Where is Genius doctor-act fits better then the series he got famous in.

A animated version of the Rimski Korsakov opera. For the opera lover is especially the palace in the animation interesting it based on the original stage design. The voices & music is one of the most delicate versions I know. In the early fifties in which it was recorded the understanding of the opera was much more suiting the romantic/esoteric character of the opera, then todays practice.

As an opera it isn't much played.

For the ones not familiar to opera it's a nice introduction. Following the fairytale of the snow-maiden, the story it's more interesting and richer of content then the average opera. Rimsky Korsav's and his libretto writer made a few changes to the fairytale that brought the esoteric content of the opera much more to the surface.

The animation, in a beautiful early 50's Russian fairytale style, in the one hand keeps the static style of the opera intact, while on the other hand much more focusing on the story the opera is bases on, and telling it as a fairytale should be told, while it's dynamic is still the dynamic of the opera. It's not degraded into a Disney comedy animation, killing the deeper layers of the story.

That at the time it was made the ideology of social realism was (often)leading in animation, so a lot of "rotoscoping" is used, helped to keep it a very dignified adaptation of the opera. While at the same time keeping the dialog spoken, and cutting some elements of the first act make it much more accessible. Although I think the role of Kupava and the role of Lel and perhaps the parents get a bit cut too much. I understand it's a director's choice where to cut to keep the animation around 1 hour long, but I would have left more of the 1st act intact.

The version of the animation in circulation, by the way, has a very abrupt cut in Lel's first aria in the first act. a part of the aria is missing, in a way that makes you think there is a piece of film missing there too.

All in all there is a good balance between respect for the basic material and adapting it to an animation idiom.

One of the greatest fairytale animations of it's era. In a classic fairytale structure, somewhere in between the Grimm fairy tales "Hansl & Gretl" ( Witch wanting to eat the brother) and "Frau Holle" (Girl getting rewarded for helping an oven, an apple-tree etc.)

Left in charge of her little brother as her parents go to town, Mashenka leaves him alone for a little while to play with her friends. The little boy get's abducted by a group of geese-swans in service of the witch Baba-Yaga Mashenka set's out to free him, and receives help from an oven, a brook, an apple-tree and later a hedgehog

The IMDb wrongly credits Ivan Ivanov-Vano for the co-direction, but it's co-directed by Albert Ivanov, next to Alexandra Snezhko-Blotskaya. Unfortunately the IMDb is very incomplete and unreliable for Russian animation. Ivan was working at " The stranger's voice" at the time.

See http://www.animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_film&fid=2982. for the correct credits.