The Humpbacked Horse (1947 film)

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The Humpbacked Horse
DVD cover (Krupnyy Plan)
Directed by	Ivan Ivanov-Vano
Produced by	Soyuzmultfilm
Written by	Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov (poem) A. Surkov
Starring	Alik Kachanov Georgiy Millyar Valentina Sperantova Leonid Pirogov
Music by	V. Oranskiy
Cinematography	Nikolai Voinov
Release date(s)	1947 (USSR)
Running time	57 min 3 sec
Country	USSR
Language	Russian
IMDb profile

Ivan and Konyok-gorbunok (the humpbacked horse) at the bottom

The dance of the firebirds.

The Humpbacked Horse (Russian: Конёк-Горбуно́к; tr.:Konyok Gorbunok) is a 1947 Soviet traditionally-animated feature film directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. The film is based on the poem by Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov, and because of this everyone in the film speaks in rhymes.

[edit] Plot

An old man has three sons - the elder two are considered fairly smart, while the youngest, Ivan, is considered an idiot. One day the father sends the three to find out who's been taking the hay in their fields at night. The elder brothers decide to lie hidden in a haystack, where they promptly fall asleep. Ivan, meanwhile, sits beside a birch tree and plays on his recorder. Suddenly, he sees a magnificent horse come flying out of the sky. Ivan grabs its mane and holds on as the horse tries to shake him off. Finally, the horse begs him to let her go and in return gives him two beautiful black horses and a little humpbacked horse (Konyok-gorbunok) to be his companion.

Ivan leads the two black horses to a stable and runs off with Konyok-gorbunok to fetch them buckets of water. When he comes back, he finds that his brothers have taken his horses. Koyok-gorbunok tells him that they will catch them in the city, so Ivan sits on its back and they go flying through the clouds. Along the way, Ivan finds the fiery feather of a firebird, which shines without giving off any heat, and takes it despite Konyok-gorbunok's warning that it will cause him difficulty later.

They reach the city, and Ivan outwits his brothers and sells his black horses to the Tsar. When it is found that nobody can control them except Ivan, he is put in charge of the Tsar's stables. The Tsar's adviser takes a disliking to Ivan, and hides himself in the stables to watch him at work so that he can think of a way to remove him from the Tsar's favour. After seeing Ivan use the firebird's feather for light, he steals it from him and shows it to the Tsar, who commands Ivan to catch him a firebird or lose his post.

With Konyok-gorbunok's help, Ivan catches one and brings it back to the king. The Tsar's advisor tells the Tsar to make Ivan catch a beautiful legendary maiden of the sea, so the Tsar summons him and tells him that the consequences will be dire if he doesn't bring her within three weeks. Ivan again manages to do this.

The elderly tsar is overjoyed and begs the young maiden to marry him, but she refuses, telling him that she would only marry him if he were young and handsome, and that to become young and handsome he would need to bath first in boiling water, then in milk and then in freezing water. The tsar's advisor tells him to try this out on Ivan first, hoping at last to be rid of his nemesis. The tsar agrees, and when Ivan protests upon being told of this the tsar orders him to be thrown into prison until everything is ready the next morning. Konyok-gorbunov comes to Ivan and through the prison bars tells him not to worry - to simply whistle for him in the morning and let him put a magic spell on the water so that it will not be harmfull to him. The advisor overhears this, and kidnaps Konyok-gorbunok just as he is walking away from Ivan.

In the morning, Ivan whistles for Konyok-gorbunok, who is tied in a bag. He manages to free himself eventually, and at the last moment comes to Ivan's rescue and puts a spell on the three containers of water. Ivan jumps into the boiling water, then the milk and then the freezing water, and emerges as a handsome young man instead of a boy. The young maiden falls in love with him and they walk away. Meanwhile, the tsar gets excited and decides that he also wants to be young and handsome. However, the spell is no longer working, so after he jumps into the boiling water he doesn't come back out.

[edit] Creators

[edit] Trivia

Production sketch for the film, scanned from Ivanov-Vano's autobiography Кадр за кадром ("Frame by Frame").

• In 1975 Ivan Ivanov-Vano made another version of the same film, upgrading the animation (especially that of the animals) and rearranging and adding a few scenes. This was done because the original film was then in a very bad shape and the technical expertise for a restoration did not exist. In 2004, with the technical expertise now existing in Russia, the film was restored and released on DVD by Krupnyy Plan (Крупный План).
• The 1975 version was redubbed, recut and released in the United States as The Magic Pony in 1977, with Jim Backus as the voice of the Tsar.

[edit] See also

• History of Russian animation
• List of animated feature films
• List of films based on poems

[edit] External links

• Konyok-gorbunok at the Internet Movie Database
  • The Magic Horse at the Internet Movie Database (duplicate IMDB entry with incorrect date)
• Konyok-gorbunok (1975) at the Internet Movie Database
  • The Magic Pony at the Internet Movie Database (duplicate IMDB entry)
• Konyok-gorbunok at animator.ru (English and Russian)
• Konyok-gorbunok at myltik.ru (Russian)
• Review of 2004 Krupnyy Plan DVD (in Russian but with helpful images)
• Short article at Anipages comparing the 1947 and 1975 versions