Skazka skazok (1979)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Yuriy Norshteyn

Writers:

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (writer) and
Yuriy Norshteyn (writer)

Release Date:

14 April 1984 (Japan)

Genre:

Animation | Short

Plot Keywords:

Critically Acclaimed

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Aleksandr Kalyagin

...

Little Grey Wolf (voice)

Also Known As:

Сказка сказок (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Pridet serenkiy volchok (Soviet Union: Russian title) (working title)
Tale of Tales (International: English title)
The Little Grey Wolf Will Come (International: English title)

Runtime:

29 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:U

Filming Locations:

Former USSR

Company:

Soyuzmultfilm

Trivia:

The title of the film, and partial inspiration, came from a poem by Nazim Hikmet. The original title "The Little Grey Wolf Will Come" was rejected by censors.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Utomlyonnye solntsem (1994)

Soundtrack:

Utomlyonnoe solntse

Memory and Emotion

I must discuss the Russian Yuri Norstein's stunning "Tale of Tales". Like the films of another great Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, this film is about memory and nostalgia. The uses of various techniques of animation, primarily cutouts, not only let us see Norstein's memories, but also help illustrate their dream-like qualities. There are events in this film that, taken literally, could not have happened. However Norstein represents these memories metaphorically, thereby making their emotional impact greater than were he to simply illustrate his memories in a straight forward narrative.

There are a couple of moments that reflect the above-mentioned statement that I feel I must include in this entry. I loved the scene where the little boy is standing in the snow eating an apple , looking up at some crows on a tree branch. The boy then appears on the branch, buddies up with the crows and shares his apple with them. This is a great, moving, but non-sentimental image that lets us feel the child's desire for friendship. Just after that, his father, whose Napoleon hat identifies him as a tyrant, yanks him out of his daydream. The little boy at first struggles, but then a little Napoleon hat appears on his head and he marches in file behind his dad. This scene reminded me of the Disney WWII era short "Education for Death", in that it also is about childhood innocence being destroyed by adults conditioning their behavior. But where "Education." was a didactic propaganda tool, "Tale of Tales" simply shows how sad and unfortunate it is for adults to do that to children, and illustrates it in such a poetic way.