Tom Soyer

1936 FamilyAdventure 79 minutes Directed by Lazar Frenkel

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About Tom Soyer

The titles place Tom Sawyer in Pittsburgh, on the Mississippi. He runs off with Huck Finn, Joe Harper, and Jim to an empty island, where Huck turns up a treasure. The town makes a pet of Huck and names the widow Douglas his guardian. Huck hates the new rules. He and Tom go to the cemetery to put a curse on her and instead see Dr. Robinson murdered. The boys, thought drowned, also walk into their own funeral.

Cast & crew

More about Tom Soyer

Lazar Frenkel and Glib Zatvornytskyi directed. Nikolai Shestakov adapted Mark Twain. The credits name the Kiev studio as Ukrainfilm, later the Dovzhenko studio. Yuri Vovchenko photographed it. Aleksey Bobrovnikov and Nikolai Tryaskin designed it. Alexander Krein wrote the music. Yuri Vinokurov is credited as producer.

Themes

  • running away to an island
  • a found treasure
  • a guardian the boy rejects
  • a murder in a graveyard
  • walking into one's own funeral
  • Tom Sawyer
  • Huck Finn
  • Joe Harper
  • Jim
  • widow Douglas
  • Dr. Robinson
  • treasure
  • funeral

Background

Ukrainfilm released the picture in 1936, after socialist realism had been declared the required method and while foreign classics were still being filmed if they could be read as stories about the poor.

Making

Shestakov's script keeps the island, the treasure, the widow's guardianship, the graveyard killing, and the funeral interruption, and drops the whitewash and the cave.

Look

Yuri Vovchenko shot the black-and-white feature, with Bobrovnikov and Tryaskin supplying the American town and the island.

Music

Alexander Krein composed the score. Nikolai Ushakov wrote the songs.

Preservation

A print survives at feature length, about 79 minutes, and a digital copy is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • The on-screen town is Pittsburgh, not St. Petersburg, Missouri.
  • Wayland Rudd, the African American actor working in the Soviet Union, is in the cast, along with Yevgeny Samoylov, Klavdiya Polovikova, Kostiantyn Kulchytskyi, and Dmytro Miliutenko.
  • The Russian release title is Том Сойер. Tom Soyer is a transliteration used in some catalogues.
  • Letterboxd and Russian film listings give a premiere in the Ukrainian SSR on 22 January 1936.
  • Nikolai Ushakov is credited with the songs.
  • A digital copy of a surviving print is filed on Wikimedia Commons.

Scenes

  • Huck finds a treasure on the island and the town appoints widow Douglas his guardian.
  • Tom and Huck, at the cemetery to hex the widow, see Dr. Robinson killed.
  • The boys walk in on the service being held for them.

Influenced by

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain