Young Fritz
About Young Fritz
Professor 'Antrepalogy,' played by Maxim Shtraukh, lectures on the upbringing of a 'true Aryan,' tapping skulls with a pointer. The life of young Fritz plays out like a puppet show. Mikhail Zharov starts the size of a newborn in a cradle, grows into a huge brute, and stamps stormtrooper boots across a map of Europe. At the end Fritz is put in a Soviet zoo, because, the film says, science needs every kind of beast.
Cast & crew
More about Young Fritz
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg directed Samuil Marshak's script, taken from his satiric poem. Andrei Moskvin photographed it. Lev Shvarts wrote the music.
Themes
Background
A 1943 Lenfilm satire made while the war with Germany was still going.
Making
Kozintsev and Trauberg staged Marshak's wartime pamphlet at Lenfilm, with Zharov growing from a cradle infant to a map-sized soldier.
Look
Andrei Moskvin shot the lecture hall, the puppet-like biography, and the map of Europe under Fritz's boots.
Music
Lev Shvarts wrote the score.
Preservation
The short survives and is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Mikhail Astangov plays a teacher. Vsevolod Pudovkin plays an officer.
- Mikhail Vysotsky and Lydia Atmanaki play Fritz's father and mother. Yanina Zheimo is in the cast. Konstantin Sorokin plays Franz.
- Lyudmila Shabalina plays a guide in a 'Museum of the Future.'
- The Russian title is Юный Фриц. Marshak's poem is sometimes titled Young Fritz, or the Examination for a Certificate of Beastliness.
Scenes
- Shtraukh taps a row of skulls during the lecture.
- Fritz, grown huge, stamps across the map.
- He is caged in a Soviet zoo.
Influenced by
- Samuil Marshak's poem The Young Fritz
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1943. Юный фриц.webm)
Quotes
For science, any beast is necessary.
