The Tale of the Priest and his Worker Balda
About The Tale of the Priest and his Worker Balda
A vain, stingy priest walks the market looking for a cook, a stableman, and a carpenter who will work hard for little pay. He hires Balda. The wage is three slaps on the forehead at the end of the year, plus boiled spelt to eat. Balda works. When the year is up he collects the slaps, and the priest finds out what the bargain costs.
Cast & crew
More about The Tale of the Priest and his Worker Balda
Panteleymon Sazonov directed this drawn short at Soyuzmultfilm from Alexander Pushkin's tale. Iosif Kovner wrote the music. It is a different film from Mikhail Tsekhanovsky's unfinished 1933–1936 version.
Themes
Background
Pushkin's anti-clerical tale, unpublished in his lifetime, was a recurring Soviet cartoon subject. This is the 1940 Soyuzmultfilm version.
Making
Sazonov made a complete short in 1940 after the longer Tsekhanovsky production had stopped.
Music
Iosif Kovner wrote the score. Shostakovich's music belongs to the lost Tsekhanovsky version, not to this short.
Preservation
Sazonov's 1940 short survives and is on Wikimedia Commons. Tsekhanovsky's 1930s version does not, apart from the two-minute Bazaar fragment.
Notes
- Catalog voice credits include Leonid Pirogov, Yelena Tyapkina, Andrei Tutyshkin, Yuliya Yulskaya, and Ivan Zalessky.
- Tsekhanovsky's earlier cartoon, with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich, was lost in a fire at a Lenfilm storehouse early in the war. A two-minute fragment called The Bazaar survives.
- A later puppet version was made by Anatoly Karanovich in 1956, with music by Nikolai Peyko.
- The Russian title is Сказка о попе и его работнике Балде.
Scenes
- The priest hires Balda at the market for three slaps a year.
- Balda delivers the slaps when the year ends.
Influenced by
- Alexander Pushkin's The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1940. Сказка о Попе и его работнике Балде.ogv)
