THE YEAR IN REVIEW: FILM; Now in America, the Films of the Soviet Walt Disney (original) (raw)
Movies|THE YEAR IN REVIEW: FILM; Now in America, the Films of the Soviet Walt Disney
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THE YEAR IN REVIEW: FILM
- Dec. 30, 2001
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December 30, 2001
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Section 2, Page
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IF Russians of a certain age pooled their experiences of childhood in the Soviet Union, their collective memory would include the first time they saw a film by Alexandr Ptushko. American children had the animated antics of Walt Disney's cartoon characters; Russian children had the characters of Ptushko: richly textured animated puppets who inhabit a miniature land, beautiful fairy-tale queens and handsome, brave heroes who defend the motherland from outside invaders.
Ptushko (1900-1973) made films that were rich in special effects -- some dazzling and colorful, others scary and ghoulish. His stories came from fairy tales, but unlike filmmakers who used folk tales to subtly criticize the Soviet system, Ptushko's films were straightforward: good was good, and evil was evil.
While Russians are familiar with Ptushko, Americans have had little access to his films. But last spring, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles held a retrospective, and the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center is presenting a five-film retrospective, ''Fantastika! The Films of Alexandr Ptushko,'' which runs until Tuesday.
The earliest film in the series, ''The New Gulliver'' (1935), was one of the first full-length animated features using puppets. Updating Jonathan Swift's satirical ''Gulliver's Travels'' to fit a Soviet context, Lilliput is a world where a silly and ineffectual king presides over a decadent bourgeois society while workers toil underground. One day Petya, an earnest young giant, arrives from another world to organize the workers toward a more glorious future. The parallels with the Russian Revolution are clear, but the film is witty, playful and imaginative enough to save it from being pure propaganda.
Ptushko's tales were not restricted to Soviet ideals; he frequently turned to the pre-Soviet legends and fairy tales that helped define Russians as a people. Shortly after World War II he directed ''The Stone Flower'' (1946), set in the Ural Mountains. An apprentice stone carver with an artist's tormented soul is lured away to a dazzling and colorful world by a mystical queen. In the end, however, the riches of the land, the value of hard work and the simple life prevail.
In ''Sadko'' (1953), the title character, from the city of Novgorod, journeys to exotic, faraway lands seeking the Blue Bird of Happiness. Eventually, he discovers that there's no place like home.
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