Larissa Golubkina as the Tsaritsa, condemned to death with her “monster son”—born two feet tall! —in Aleksandr Ptushko’s lovely film of Pushkin’s THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN.
TSAR SALTAN remains true to its origins by having all its dialogue spoken in rhyme; this may be initially awkward for some, but most viewers will get into the swing of it and find that the po- etry adds vastly to the film’s charm and noble character. Among the highlights are the battle with the troglodytes (club- swinging actors in hairy suits with faces painted on their bare stom- achs); the sudden springing-to- life of the twin lion-shaped arm rests on the Tsar’s throne; the Tsaritsa and Guiron’s entrance into their new kingdom and dis- covery of statue-like villagers who are given life by their touch; Guiron’s enchanted transfor- mation into a mosquito who wreaks a stinging vengeance on those who betrayed him and his mother, and the swan’s trans- formation into the beautiful Tsarevna, who wears a single jewel on her head that radiates spokes of magical light; but noth- ing is quite so moving as the spectacle of the Tsar’s heartbro- ken villagers, forced to send the royal mother and child to their deaths, and showing their
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devotion by dispensing with the provided wooden ladder, kneel- ing, and having them climb into the barrel on the rungs of their own arms. To offer a completely unnecessary side note, Vidov and Ryabinkina would have been ideal casting in an alternative universe 1960s film about Mar- vel Comics’ characters Quicksil- ver and the Scarlet Witch. Lensed in Sovscope 70mm with an aspect ratio of 2.00:1, the film is presented here in an- amorphic 1.99:1, mostly looking quite lovely, with vibrant colors, reasonable detail and intermit- tent grain, but with some of the more widely composed shots no- ticeably squeezed to fit onscreen in their entirety. 5.1 audio is avail- able in Russian, English, French and Spanish (the latter two tracks dubbed in crude “voiceover” style), with the Russian mix be- ing the most spacious and en- veloping. The English track is acceptable though not quite ideal as its rhymes are more forced and the few included songs are presented in Russian; the only way to fully appreciate the songs and their value to the scenario—
indeed, the only way to fully ap- preciate the film—is to watch it in Russian with the more beauti- fully crafted English subtitles, which convey the actual perfor- mances and a truer sense of the literary value of Pushkin. Extras include filmographies and a gallery of ten photos; a compact interview with costume designer Olga Kruchinina (4m 36s) and a portfolio of her work; trailers for Ptushko’s ILYA MUROMETS (aka THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON) and A TALE OF LOST TIME; THE FAIRY TALE WORLD OF ALEXANDER PTUSHKO (29m 50s), a promotional short for a 1988 theatrical reissue of his works, in which a magician takes two children on a tour of Ptushko’s filmic universe; and Mikhail Tsekhanovsky’s THE FISHERMAN AND THE GOLDFISH [Skazka O Rybake i Rybke, 1950; 30m 10s], a wryly humor- ous and beautifully animated featurette based on Pushkin’s 1835 poem. A product of the Ivanov-Vano animation studios, this cartoon makes use of rotoscoping methods similar to those of Flesicher’s GULLIVER’S
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