The Enchanted Boy

The Enchanted Boy Заколдованный мальчик
Nils on Martin's back during their adventure across Lapland
Directed by	Vladimir Polkovnikov Aleksandra Snezhko-Blotskaya
Produced by	Soyuzmultfilm
Written by	Selma Lagerlöf (story) Mikhail Volpin
Starring	Valentina Sperantova Alexey Konsovskiy Tatyana Strukova Anatoly Kubatsky Erast Garin Georgiy Vitsin
Music by	Vladimir Yurovskiy
Edited by	Nina Mayorova
Release dates	1955 (1955)
Running time	46 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

The Enchanted Boy (Russian: Заколдованный мальчик, Zakoldovanyy malchik) is a 1955 Soviet/Russian traditionally animated feature film directed by Vladimir Polkovnikov and Aleksandra Snezhko-Blotskaya. The film is an adaptation of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf. It was produced at the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow.

The film's image and sound were recently restored by the Russian company Krupnyy Plan, which released it on video and DVD packaged together with Cipollino, a 1961, 40-minute feature film directed by Boris Dyozhkin. No English-subtitled version has been released.

Plot

The naughty boy Nils, who delights in torturing animals, is bewitched by a tomte. Now shrunken to a small size and able to talk to animals, he flies across Lapland on the backs of wild geese. During these dangerous travels he does many noble deeds, and, at the same time, searches for the tomte who would take the spell away.

Creators

Interesting facts

• For strengthening of an image artists gave to the leader of a horde of rats of line (a bang on the head) and manners of behavior of Adolf Hitler (it is remarkable that the actor Sergey Martinson sounding the Rat (in credits is absent) the first on the Soviet screen embodied Hitler in the movie "New Adventures of Shveyk").
• At the episode occurring in "the night city" in Selma Lagerlöf's book the exact scene of action — the city of Karlskrona is specified. The Bronze King and the Wooden Boatswain (it Rozenbom) has real prototypes — a monument to the king Charles XI of Sweden and a wooden statue - "moneybox" at a vegetable marrow.

Video

In the early nineties the animated film is released on videotapes by the film association "Krupnyy Plan", later to the middle of the 1990th — in the collection "The Best Soviet Animated Films" of Studio PRO Video, in the mid-nineties — in the collection of animated films of a film studio "Soyuzmultfilm" a videostudio "Soyuz", since 1996 was reissued by the same studio.

See also

• History of Russian animation
• List of animated feature-length films

External links

• The Enchanted Boy at the Internet Movie Database
• «The Enchanted Boy» on YouTube (Official Russian)
• «The Enchanted Boy» on YouTube (Russian with English subtitles)
• The Enchanted Boy at the Animator.ru
• The Enchanted Boy at Myltik.ru (Russian)
• The Enchanted Boy at Krupnyy Plan (Russian)