The Scarlet Flower
About The Scarlet Flower
Before a sea voyage the merchant Stepan Emelyanovich asks his three daughters for a gift to bring home. The eldest wants a shining tiara, the middle a mirror that will keep her young, and the youngest, Nastenka, a scarlet flower she has seen in a dream. A storm throws him onto an island of wonders; a monster lets him pick the flower only if one daughter will come to live there, and hands him a ring that carries the wearer to the island. Nastenka overhears his plan to go back and die in their place, and she puts the ring on herself. Her sisters turn the clocks back so she misses the hour of her return, she finds the monster dying, and her promise never to leave him breaks a witch's spell and turns him into a prince.
Cast & crew
More about The Scarlet Flower
Lev Atamanov directed Soyuzmultfilm's fourth feature from Sergei Aksakov's 1858 tale, with a scenario by Georgiy Grebner and lyrics by Yakov Shvedov. Alexander Vinokurov and Leonid Shvartsman were the production designers, and Mikhail Druyan was the cameraman.
Themes
Background
Aksakov published the story in 1858. It is a Russian telling of the Beauty and the Beast plot, and Atamanov's film follows that gift-and-island bargain.
Making
Animators traced photographed performances of actors, then altered the drawings so the fairy-tale bodies would not stay in human proportion.
Look
Mikhail Druyan operated the camera on the photographed live-action reference used for the traced animation.
Technique
Movement was rotoscoped by the éclair method: live scenes were projected, traced onto paper, and redrawn.
Music
Nikolai Budashkin wrote the score. Victoria Ivanova sang Nastenka's song "V etu poru v rodimoy storonushke."
Preservation
The film was restored in 1987 at the Gorky Film Studio.
Notes
- Nikolai Bogolyubov voices the merchant. Mikhail Astangov voices the monster.
- In 1998 Films by Jove released an English dub in the series Stories from My Childhood, with Amy Irving, Tim Curry, and Robert Loggia.
- The monster tells Nastenka she may visit home, but if she is not back by eight he will die of loneliness.
Scenes
- The merchant plucks the scarlet flower and the monster appears in the storm.
- The sisters set the clocks back an hour, and Nastenka returns to find the monster near death.
- The flower joins its stem again and the monster becomes a prince.
Influenced by
- Sergei Aksakov's 1858 story The Scarlet Flower
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1952. Аленький цветочек.webm)
