I have to say I am pretty shocked to see this half-hour animated short film by director and writer Yuriy Norshteyn receive such favorable reviews and ratings. I guess this is mostly because of the film's style. Everything about it is so Soviet from start to finish: the animation, the music and probably also the story. Still, I have to say I did not find it memorable at all. It looks much older than it actually is (35 years old) and yes, in this case, it is a negative aspect. The only positive thing about it is that there is no spoken dialogue in here, so people from all over the world can enjoy it without subtitles, even if they do not speak Russian. But I don't think they want to. This film is really only for a very small group of film lovers, not for broad masses. And I do not belong to this group. Not recommended and "Tale of Tales" is also a pretty pretentious title that sounds full of itself.
The above is my original 2015 review for this 29-minute short film from 1979 and now in 2024 I took another look at it and will just do some brainstorming now:
First of all, I stand with my original perception that the film did not really win me over. Music is okay, so is the animation, which is sometimes even more than okay, but the big issue I had here was with the plot or contents overall that probably easily could have been packed into half the runtime. The scenes with the wolf were still among the better moments, also because of Aleksandr Kalyagin's singing and the sound effects as well. By the way, even if said wolf does not look evil, but rather kind, you cannot say for sure what he is thinking and what he does with the baby in the end, but there are other animals included here like a fish very briefly or a rope-jumping cow/bull that is having a fun time with humans or sitting around and perhaps thinking about we will never know what it is. But the wolf is the most memorable. The rest of the protagonists are humans. They were more forgettable to me though and it was probably more about the scenario with them, like during one occasion we witness people finding out about how a soldier was apparently wounded in war and seemingly died. We are supposed to feel the widow's pain. This moment is almost the only one where subtitles help because you need to understand the words written on the screen. They are not too difficult to find anyway, so use them if you et a hand on those and you will also understand the words from the wolf's singing at the beginning and end.
So yeah, there is a great deal of elaboration in here on Russian history, society and more. Perhaps the current situation in 2024 also contributes to people taking a look at this Soviet film again. All three major protagonists are over 80 now. I mentioned Kalyagin already and the co-writer here was Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. But the one person this film is associated more with than any other is Yuri Norstein. I am a bit surprised that this work here was almost his final effort as a director and one of his final efforts as an animator too because he was really not old back then and it is probably one of his most famous works now, not only because it won awards in Canada and Croatia. In the early years of the new millennium, Norstein had a little comeback by working on a compilation of animated shorts from Japan. As for this one here, I still have to give the outcome a thumbs-down, even if I would be kinda interested in seeing more from the small grey wolf, but he is also the only aspect that got me curious. Not enough for the runtime and the negative is just more frequent here than the positive. I suggest you watch something else instead. It's also not a film for kids despite being animation, not because it's gruesome or anything, but instead because of the seriousness of certain aspects. If I take a look at other works by Norstein (again) in the future, I hope those will be superior. The Soviet Union has some great and heartfelt animation. "Skazka skazok" does not fall in this category.
The above is my original 2015 review for this 29-minute short film from 1979 and now in 2024 I took another look at it and will just do some brainstorming now:
First of all, I stand with my original perception that the film did not really win me over. Music is okay, so is the animation, which is sometimes even more than okay, but the big issue I had here was with the plot or contents overall that probably easily could have been packed into half the runtime. The scenes with the wolf were still among the better moments, also because of Aleksandr Kalyagin's singing and the sound effects as well. By the way, even if said wolf does not look evil, but rather kind, you cannot say for sure what he is thinking and what he does with the baby in the end, but there are other animals included here like a fish very briefly or a rope-jumping cow/bull that is having a fun time with humans or sitting around and perhaps thinking about we will never know what it is. But the wolf is the most memorable. The rest of the protagonists are humans. They were more forgettable to me though and it was probably more about the scenario with them, like during one occasion we witness people finding out about how a soldier was apparently wounded in war and seemingly died. We are supposed to feel the widow's pain. This moment is almost the only one where subtitles help because you need to understand the words written on the screen. They are not too difficult to find anyway, so use them if you et a hand on those and you will also understand the words from the wolf's singing at the beginning and end.
So yeah, there is a great deal of elaboration in here on Russian history, society and more. Perhaps the current situation in 2024 also contributes to people taking a look at this Soviet film again. All three major protagonists are over 80 now. I mentioned Kalyagin already and the co-writer here was Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. But the one person this film is associated more with than any other is Yuri Norstein. I am a bit surprised that this work here was almost his final effort as a director and one of his final efforts as an animator too because he was really not old back then and it is probably one of his most famous works now, not only because it won awards in Canada and Croatia. In the early years of the new millennium, Norstein had a little comeback by working on a compilation of animated shorts from Japan. As for this one here, I still have to give the outcome a thumbs-down, even if I would be kinda interested in seeing more from the small grey wolf, but he is also the only aspect that got me curious. Not enough for the runtime and the negative is just more frequent here than the positive. I suggest you watch something else instead. It's also not a film for kids despite being animation, not because it's gruesome or anything, but instead because of the seriousness of certain aspects. If I take a look at other works by Norstein (again) in the future, I hope those will be superior. The Soviet Union has some great and heartfelt animation. "Skazka skazok" does not fall in this category.