The New Gulliver

Live action with stop-motion effects movies had appeared on the screen for several years before Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko released his country's first animated feature film, March 1935's "The New Gulliver." The ambitious motion picture is noted for its breath in the number of figurines involved in the production, totaling nearly 3,000. The 75-minute film was two years in the making, and astonished the international movie community by its sophistication of its wondrous special effects.

Author Graham Green, in his review for The Spectator, heaped compliments on Ptushko and his team's techniques to pull off such an eye-popping movie. He noted, "the marvelous ingenuity of the puppets are beyond praise. One soon begins to regard them as real people and to give critical applause to the performers." The puppets' creators constructed their small characters with detachable heads, so when a close-up was called for, the heads could be removed to work on the mold expressions of their face, reflecting each individual personality. A life-sized figure of the only human character in Liliputian land, actor Vladimir Konstantinov as a Gulliver-like person, was constructed and used whenever he was motionless, such as when he was tied up soon after arriving on the island.

Ptushko had made a name for himself in Russian film during the waning years of silent movies as a creator of realistic stop-motion short films. He was assigned a team of animators at Moscow's Mosfilm studio to create "The New Gulliver," with the proviso his movies carry the Communist message. The twist in his opening of "The New Gulliver" has young Petya (Konstantinov) and his youth corps friends explore an off-shore island. The team leader decides to read Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' with Petya nodding off. In his dream, when the Liliputian military and police decide to do away with the giant human, the underground workers, tired of their exploited condition, move to overcome their oppressors by telling Petya the police plan to poison him. Things get pretty one-sided when the giant makes his moves.

The large scope of "The New Gulliver" impressed international viewers. Charlie Chaplin loved the message and technology of Ptushko's work. Czech director Karel Zeman, who later excelled creating animation movies, was inspired after watching the feature film "to the possibilities of the animated screen." American special effects artist Ray Harryhausen, creator of 1958's "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and 1963's "Jason and the Argonauts," said watching Ptushko's first feature film had a profound effect on his future career. "I was sixteen when I saw the movie, a tour de force of stop-motion model animation which is virtually unknown today but, at the time, was one of the earliest and most complex examples of live action and puppet animation," wrote Harryhausen in his memoirs. "For me, the movement of the tiny characters was totally absorbing, while the underlying politics went right over my head."

Ptushko not only survived World War Two but continued his film work well into the early 1970s.

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!

If you've been searching for a Soviet version of "Gulliver's Travels" populated with a cast of animated puppets, scored with rousing musical numbers saluting the heroic proletariat, look no further -- this is the film for you! Novyy Gullier (a.k.a. "The New Gulliver") which was the first major work by director Alexsandr Ptushko, is also one of the first feature-length films to showcase puppet animation. Once we get past the live-action prologue, which lasts about 10 minutes or so, the bulk of the film is set in an animated Lilliput, populated by 'pixilated' puppets and clay figures who often share the frame with the human actor playing Gulliver. This is not the first feature-length film to offer animation of this kind -- Ladislaus Starewicz' Tale of the Fox (1930) predates it -- but it's a milestone nonetheless, not only in scale but in audacity.

Audacious it certainly is, but for me the film turned out to be a disappointment. The animation technique displayed by Starewicz is more accomplished than Ptushko's in every way: the movement of his characters in Tale of the Fox was smoother, his pacing was tighter, and his sense of humor more robust. To be fair, however, Starewicz was working in France, unencumbered by censorship, while Ptushko labored under the severe disadvantage of having to function and survive as an artist in Stalin's USSR. Consequently, his version of Swift had to be adapted for Soviet consumption, and the propaganda is duly ladled on with a heavy hand. Lilliput's king is a drooling moron who giggles and scratches himself, while his ministers are all decadent sadists and cowards; meanwhile, the underground labor movement is made up of earnest, muscular, and interchangeable workers who eventually overthrow the corrupt royalists with Gulliver's help. Stirring anthems to labor are sung at key moments.

But the biggest problem, in my opinion, is the draggy pacing. Despite the fact that Ptushko often has an impressive amount of action going on in the frame, nothing much happens plot-wise for long stretches, and when action does occur it occurs slowly. Worse, the comedy is poorly handled; most of it involves the king's evil minions, but it's all very clunky and obvious. Opportunities for gags are botched, one after another. (Perhaps Ptushko found it difficult to be funny with the apparatchiks of Stalin's Ministry of Culture breathing down his neck. Of course, he would have had similar problems in Germany or Italy at the time.) The most memorable and amusing sequence is the performance given for Gulliver's pleasure by the king's dancers and singers, whose solemnity is considerably more laugh-provoking than the forced antics of the corrupt courtiers. Also impressive is the sequence in the underground factory, where a spider-like machine and the robotic movements of the workers are suggestive of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Novyy Gulliver is no masterpiece, but it is an unusual and significant achievement, quite unlike anything else ever produced, and a must for animation buffs. Viewers with an interest in the role of the artist in a totalitarian state will likely find this a fascinating document, albeit one with disturbing undertones.

That is not saying that The New Gulliver is bad, it isn't, far from it. Just that after seeing the likes of The Tale of Tsar Sultan, Stone Flower, Sadko, Ruslan and Ludmilla- all quintessential Russian fantasies- I was expecting a little more. But it actually is very interesting and also very impressive, and of historical importance for animation and stop-motion. The visuals are amazing, so much detail, breadth and nuances went into them and it showed. They exude a great atmosphere as well, it does have a beauty and charm at times but there is more of an emphasis on the weirdness and eeriness to match the politics and it didn't feel misplaced at all. The photography doesn't undermine how the characters and settings look either, and I can only echo what Ray Harryhousen said of his experience of The New Gulliver as a child that while the politics went over his head, he found the visuals totally absorbing. The music is haunting and atmosphere yet rousing and sumptuous. I simply love the sung anthems, very stirring indeed. There are a fair number of scenes that leave you transfixed and in awe, and the two that really stand out are I agree the performer for Gulliver and the underground factory. Ptushko's direction is fine, early on in his career there is ambition and an eye for detail that would bloom even more later on. The acting is good, some may find it on the mannered and broad side, maybe so but those and also the nobility the actors had were part of the charm. For all those good points, The New Gulliver is not without its weak points. The political aspects can feel heavy-handed and bogs the film down to the extent that the pacing is affected. And the pacing can get tedious at times, while the comedy also falls flat, not just coming across as not very funny but in some scenes rather out of place. Jonathan Swift's satire may have helped things if it hadn't been dulled down in favour of the visuals and politics. In conclusion, problematic and not among Ptushko's best but interesting and impressive. 7/10 Bethany Cox