Little Gray Neck
About Little Gray Neck
Duckling Gray Neck saves a hare from a fox. The hare gets away, but the fox breaks Gray Neck's wing, so she cannot fly south with the other birds. She winters in a shrinking patch of open water while the fox waits on the ice. A hare and a capercaillie stay with her. She keeps out of the fox's reach, learns to fly again, and in spring meets her mother when the flock returns.
Cast & crew
More about Little Gray Neck
Leonid Amalrik and Vladimir Polkovnikov directed Georgy Beryozko's script from Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's 1891 story. Nikolai Voinov photographed the drawings. Yury Nikolsky wrote the music.
Themes
Background
A 1948 Soyuzmultfilm telling of Mamin-Sibiryak's winter story about a wounded duck.
Making
Amalrik and Polkovnikov shared the direction at Soyuzmultfilm.
Look
Nikolai Voinov photographed the drawn animals and the closing ice.
Music
Yury Nikolsky wrote the score.
Preservation
The short survives. Studio AS restored it and recorded a new soundtrack in 2000. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Catalog voice credits include Lidiya Kazmina, Fyodor Kurikhin, Vera Yenyutina, Valentina Telegina, Viktoriya Ivanova, and Vladimir Popov.
- Filmopedia notes a 2000 restoration and new voice track by Studio AS.
- The Russian title is Серая шейка.
- Russian Wikipedia times the short at 20 minutes and 3 seconds.
Scenes
- The fox breaks Gray Neck's wing after the duck saves the hare.
- The open water shrinks while the fox waits.
- The mother duck returns in the spring.
Influenced by
- Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's story Gray Neck (1891)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1948. Серая шейка.webm)
