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I got a despicable 4 ad before watching this

It would be awesome to have a '80s ceckoslovakian animation video

2:47 this is very reminiscent (in a good way!) of Die Nibelungen from FritzLang, 1924. Loved this movie, makes me want to check out Rou! great vid :D

It's so weird to see a video essay on a niche facet of cinema that I'm familiar with.

Insert MST3K reference

The Russian version of "The Snow Queen" was *excellent* in my never-to-be-humble opinion. I thought it was superb, _vastly_ superior to that dumb "Frozen" movie and for years I've wished that Criterion or somebody would do an 'official' restoration of the movie, re-release it on BluRay or 4K or whatever, with a decent translation with subtitles. I would *_LOVE LOVE LOVE_* it if they ever did.

Thanks very much for this video that brings back memories! In the 70s a few of the films of Aleksandr Rou were shown on tv in Canada (originally they were dubbed in french for France’s audiences). Ten years ago I was able to find on dvd some of those films. It’s interesting to note that they had multi language options. For Aleksandr Ptushko I only saw the film from 1966 (Skazka o tsare Saltane). All those movies have a value if you like Russian folklore.

In terms of special effects, The Golden Key (1939) is mind blowing. Not only do you have a variety of effects used like masks and costumes, stop motion, forced perspective and more, they’re also incredibly well done for the time. The scenes with stop motion characters interacting with live action ones are especially mind boggling. As an English speaking animation fan and aspiring animator, it was nailed into my head from so many animation history books, video essays and documentaries that Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) was the first full length animation/live action hybrid movie to truly perfect cartoons interacting with real people. Meanwhile, in Golden Key, you’ve got stop motion characters seamlessly interacting with live actors with matching eye-lines and all like it’s nothing! In the 1930s! How this film isn’t at least a prominent footnote in the history of animation as special effects in cinema is a mystery to me. It deserves way more attention from English speaking cinephiles.

I love your channel so much, I always get new stuff to watch

Great video. The golden key was based on a book of the same name, and had an animated movie as well as another live action adaptation in the 70s which had a lot of singing and was by far the most popular of all. Despite being a retelling of Pinocchio, thematically its practically the opposite of it as Buratino's rebellious attitude and dislike of authority is what saves his father and wins him friends, which was in line with soviet writers agenda, as they saw treatment of kids as incomplete adults as bourgeois, and sought to celebrate childhood and portray kids as heroes.

These movies were my childhood, as were Soviet comedies. As a result I am patriotic, yet anti-imperialist, I respect my elders, and know the difference between a man and a woman.

I was born in the early 2000s, but Soviet films are a huge part of my cultural code. I still love these films so much, they have a special atmosphere... Thanks for your interest in our culture! Great video-essay!

I want a video about soviet horror films.

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Thank you SO MUCH for this!!!

Спасибо

I watched a lot of films you are talking about as a kid but I never ever heard about Soviet Tolkien adaptations 😮 That's something to explore further!

Thank you for shining light on the world of Soviet fantasy and folklore cinema, which is mostly unknown in the West! A few additions/clarifications: 02:52 - Baba Yaga was Georgy Millyar's most iconic role which he played in many movies, and which as you might have noticed a rather rare at the time case of a man playing a female character (that was surprisingly more common in the USSR for some reason). Millyar was a very talented actor but unfortunately did not have a pretty face (to put it politely). Instead of lamenting that fact, he made it his signature and played the villains in numerous adaptations of Russian folklore, which ironically made him a much-beloved actor of Soviet children - far better known and loved than the main characters of these movies. 11:14 - The reason that the Golden Key is quite different from other adaptations of Pinocchio, is that it is not a direct adaptation of Pinocchio. I know most sources in English state that it is, but that's wrong. The movie is an adaptation of a popular soviet fairy tale called "The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino" by Soviet author Alexei Tolstoy, which is itself a "literary treatment" of Pinocchio; a sort-of adaptation of the fairy tale for a soviet audience with numerous changes. Such literary treatments were not unusual in the Soviet Union; another famous example would be "The Wizard of the Emerald City" by Alexander Volkov - a literary treatment of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". 15:48 - Some of Mark Zakharov's films mentioned here like "An Ordinary Miracle", "To Kill a Dragon" and a movie that wasn't mentioned "The Shadow" are adaptions of plays by the probably most underrated soviet author in existence - Evgeny Schwartz. His works are really hard to categorize as fantasy; they are more of a deeply philosophical political satire that uses the vehicle of fairy tales. If you can only take one thing from my comment, please read a translation of his play "The Dragon" or at least watch Zkharov's movie adaptation "To Kill a Dragon", as it is the most insightful and thought-provoking political satire I have ever read/watched. "The Very Same Munchhausen" and "The House that Swift Built" are also works of philosophical and political satire. "Formula of Love" is also very similar but a bit more down-to-earth, still being very much a satirical comedy but slightly less philosophical. So, I really don't know about categorizing any of those movies as fantasy. Either way, they are all very solid recommendations if you can find a translation, and especially if you know Russian as much of the wordplay, wit, and humor in those movies is very difficult to translate. I'd also like to mention two fairy tale authors whose works were frequently adapted into both live-action and animated features in the Soviet Union since none of those were mentioned in the video. One is the obscure 19th-century German author Wilhelm Hauff who wrote Arabian Nights-inspired fairy tales. Live-action adaptions of his works include "The Legend of the Icy Heart" (1958), "Kalif Storch" (1968), "Little Longnose" (1970), "A Fairy Tale Told at Night" (1981), "The Adventures of Little Muk" (1984) and others. The second author is the Italian Children's author Gianni Rodari, well-liked in the Soviet Union for being a prominent communist with a lot of communist propaganda included in his fairy tales. His two most famous works adapted into live-action are "Chipollino/The Little Onion" (1973) and "The Miracle Voice of Gelsomino" (1978). A very popular animated version of Chipollino was produced as well. For the heck of it, I'll also mention the 1966 movie "The Three Fat Men" which is an adaption of a fairy tale by Yury Olesha. It has some similarities with Chipollino, both being very unsubtle communist propaganda for children yet also fun fairy tales which I have a strange nostalgia for.

Thanks for all the detailed information on Soviet Fantasy Cinema. I have the 1957 Snow Queen DVD, and remember a movie where a wind demon blows all the tables and benches out of a banquet hall.

amazing video!!

It's funny when you show "Jack Frost" you use the version that airs every Christmas on Czech commercial TV Nova.😅

Fascinating introduction to a heritage too little known among Anglophone audiences. Most of the titles and directors cited here were new to me, and I'm impressed by how many fantasy films were produced in the Soviet Union, given the strictures of Socialist Realism that governed the arts there for so long. Even with their ideological agendas, these films come across as some of the most directly appealing productions from the era, colorful fantasy and even folklore often transcending cultural barriers. The one Soviet fantasy film I've actually seen from beginning to end (via RUclips), was a 1947 version of Cinderella ('Zolushka'), directed by Nadezhda Kosheverova and Mikhail Shapiro to a script by Yevginiy Shvarts, and it's remarkable how even in the depths of Stalinism, such a bright and delightful creative vision could have been brought to Soviet screens. This is clearly an area that looks very rewarding for future exploration.

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Так необычно смотреть видео про те фильмы, которые я смотрела будучи ребёнком. Даже не знаю, что думают все те, кто не рос в странах СНГ, и не смотрел эти произведения.

I will add that "The Golden Key" is sort of based on Pinocchio, but not exactly. It's based off of a 1936 book called "The Golden Key" but also known as "The Adventures of Buratino". The book was written by Aleksey Tolstoy as a kind of retelling of Pinocchio for a Soviet readership. I do remember enjoying the 1939 version however, it was fun.

Dear Kubricklynch i was wandering if you can do a video about Greek Cinema if you have the time to make that of course

This looks mad interesting.

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your pronunciation of Czech and Slovak names is impeccable. They can be a mouthful for English speaking youtubers, it's refreshing to listen to someone who obviously practiced their pronunciation :) Being born in Czechoslovakia, when I was a kid, I didn't really like our domestic animated shows, they all seemed too gloomy. In the '90s when Cartoon Network became available, I stopped watching Czechoslovakian animations altogether. Only now when I'm in my late thirties can I appreciate not really the animation itself, but the message many of these pieces carry. Artists did NOT like the communist regime at all. These works of art should serve as a reminder to our people about how living under oppressive regime was not really that good.

As a russian I enjoy Soviet movies, music, animation and culture in general. One of my favourite things in films - the representation of women. Just look at the contrast of the women in USA/Europe cinema and in soviet pictures.

Thank you for making this video! This helped me find some movies I loved when I was a kid but didn't know the name of. The snow queen, the Scarlet Flower and the Wild Swans were part of my childhood. I remember seeing them the first time on tv (in Italy), and there was a channel that often showed soviet animated movies and series. They were my favourite, the animated style was always so fascinating and interesting

I came here because I wanted to see what might have inspired some of the Amanita Design games

I had the privilege to see Lee Chang Dongs peppermint candy at the Metrograph in NYC during the retrospective of his career, it is potentially the best film I've ever seen. Despite at the time not being as familiar with Korean history from the last 20-40 years, the film connected with me and shattered me. It's one of the few films that I've genuinely sobbed over. Being a film student myself it and the rest of Dongs work has been heavily influential and I wish one day it gets on streaming somehow, it's an all timer for me.

czechoslovakia was not a nation but a country consisting of two nations - slovaks and czechs...

I recall seeing this one right after "Harlem Nights", which I thought was an incredibly flat and phoney-seeming example of cinematography that would have looked unremarkable in a sitcom, never mind the big screen. My instant reaction to the start of "Aguirre...", with that haunting long take of the soldiers filing down the mist-wreathed mountainside, was a resounding "THIS is how you direct a movie..."

спасибо

polish guy here, last time i watched krecik (the little mole) i was crying because it was my favourite childhood show. also pat & mat (aka the neighbors) is still aired on tv and even had a remake few years ago, keeping the same stopmotion style as the classic!

I'm a 2000s kid who grew up in Greece watching though, it feels so nice to rediscover them

I've been meaning to ask: does Once Upon a Time in America (C'era Una Volta in America) [1984] count as an Italian film???

Undeniably influenced a lot of movies and series that came later, I'm actually shocked. But also may be influenced by american comics. That amphibiam looks a lot like the "Man From Atlantis" series. I also saw "Aelita" in "Metropolis", "Planeta bur" in "Lost in Space" (and tokusatsu in general). Amazing, actually. Good job. Hate communism though and revolutionaries in general - it will never work - humans are flawed and our life span is too short.

The Jetsons had video calls before