In 1958, Alexander Rowe was reborn as a storyteller. After atypical for themselves "Secrets of a mountain lake" and "Precious gift" on Soviet screens appear "New adventures of the cat in boots". Again magic, again George Millar in a negative image. It sounds great, but something went wrong.
It should be noted that even before the “Walk” Rowe did not shoot films exactly from the original source, but resorted to adaptation. During the filming of "Kashchey Immortal" on the Director even complained prominent representatives of fiction. However, with all the liberties allowed, "Kashchey" remained an unconditional "Kashchey". As for “New adventures”, then there is already a mixture of different fairy tales, some of which are not even familiar to everyone. From the actual "Cat in Boots" there are only two main characters and the beginning with the distribution of the inheritance. To be honest, I don’t know where everything else is borrowed from, and I shouldn’t know, because the name implies that the Cat in Boots is basically all the same. But it's not. I can only note that all the motifs and images of the film are typical for European fairy tales.
“New adventures” raise several themes and plot arches at once, many of which do not receive proper development. Let’s say the bag of a court doctor, which he is very afraid to lose, because ... it’s not quite clear why. Or the dislike of playing cards for chess. Why and how long it lasts, the film does not bother to say. Sometimes the narrative is so fragmentary, as if an important part of the material in the final version of the film simply did not enter. The general mood of the tape is so frivolous that it was filmed not in the 1950s, but in the 1970s. Who knows, maybe Rowe was just looking to the future?
A huge disadvantage is the cat itself, which for some reason is played by a woman. I have nothing against Maria Barabanova, but the cat (and the cat) is clearly not her role. When the Cat in her performance also meets the female character George Millar, the audience has a dissonance that has not been and will not be in other films Rowe. The same strong dissonance arises from the very unsuccessful editing of some magical scenes. For example, when the doctor loses his bag and the witch changes her appearance. In addition, in this film, Rowe abuses reverse photography for the first time when it is necessary to show the movements of characters backwards.
I can’t say that the impressions of “New Adventures” are completely bad, because the characters look colorful. I am particularly delighted by the beautiful Tamara Nosova and the magically attractive Lydia Vertinskaya. Both will later appear in the film adaptation of The Kingdom of Curved Mirrors, which is filled with a very similar atmosphere and is possibly Roe's work on errors. The transitions between the scenes, accompanied by sloping features, Rowe has already used in Precious Gift and will repeat in Mary the Artist. Thus, “New Adventures” became a kind of draft for the director, after which Rowe rose above himself.
5 out of 10
Could you dream that your cat will become human, but change sex? Much has been written about this fairy tale, since he was filmed as if based on the play by Mikhalkov, which itself was born as a creative borrowing from the great past.
Children really liked mixing something familiar in ordinary life, and clearly fabulous, children's imagination is able to work wonders even from a standard chessboard and endow the properties of rabbits-vallets-dames from the most ordinary card deck.
And a very remarkable riot of fantasy begins if familiar fairy tales penetrate one another, mix, there are extraordinary combinations. Can you imagine how three heroes would have hit Hitler? Is there a jet broom? And supersonic? And if you record “terrible stories” on a tape recorder in a terrible voice, put the villains in a lock-up and turn them records from morning to evening, what will happen?
It is not a fact that the current generation of cartoons on smartphones and fans of computer games the film will cause the same delight as their ancestors, but it is worth a try.
6 out of 10
... One of the first films of the great Soviet storyteller Alexander Rowe was staged, in fact, according to the “composition” of Sergei Mikhalkov himself (play “Laughter and Tears”), based on the famous fairy tales of Charles Perrault “The Cat in Boots” and Karl Gozzi “Love for Three Oranges”. For curious moviegoers, I will say that somewhere in the 60s, if I am not mistaken, on Soyuzmultfilm (sorry, I found it!!!) a beautiful, also "modern" cartoon about "cat in boots" was shot. Find it and enjoy it!
Now what I want to say is "for our film." I don’t know, maybe doctoral dissertations have already been written on the topic “Roe and his role in domestic cinema”. I will only write what I see and know. Agreed? Well, then...
... Rowe, unlike his "predecessor", is also a great domestic storyteller. Ptushko, in his films “delicately” began to combine fairy tales with “recognizable” viewers, small “reality of modernity” (well, for example, a quote from “Barbarian-beauty...”- "Sodas would..." And remember "Frost", from which America swelled: "To the forest in front, to my back ..." And you see, he's not the facade. In fact, in modern, rocker terms, it's called "stoeb." Here in our film he is present, as they say, “full growth!” I quote (inaccurately): “Hidden is the legacy of the old man under a stone...” "On Pushkin Square!" Wow, period! Although it belongs to the screenwriter S. Mikhalkov, but Rowe in the future “followed the same course”
... As for the woman in the role of “Cat in Boots” (Maria Barabanova), then... director Rowe is not to blame here! According to the information / publications of my colleagues-film critics, members of the Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation, this lady Rowe was forced by order on the main role (remind me: time was Soviet!), since she was then secretary of the party organization (CPSU) of the Gorky film studio. Do you understand now? She died long ago, and during her lifetime was an interesting, worthy actress. So, sorry for the deceased... After all, she played “The Cat in Boots” well. Woman!!
Being in agreement with the reviewers above, I want to stand up for the woman in the role of the Cat.
Actually, I can't stand transvestism. Why didn't I even watch ' Your aunt' with Kalyagin in disguise? A'Girls in jazz' generally disgusting.
But I think it makes sense. A man (or a boy) in the role of the Cat will be... a male actor in the role of the Cat and nothing more. A fat-ass aunt with a mustache looks ridiculous and therefore ... infernal. Something really fabulous is in such a cat, and not just a movie-masquerade.
Although yes, overall the film was weaker than the breathtaking imagination 'Curved mirrors'.
To the genius of delirium like “Kingdom of curved mirrors” this fairy tale clearly did not grow. In general, mixing two fairy tales is carefully, not how. In this case, the cocktail was long and boring.
Opens the action of the prehistory of the Soviet high-aged mare, which has long been in the Institute of absenteeism put, with hairstyle and habits caprizuli first-grader. She and her company of similar infantile friends put in their amateur studio “Cat in Boots”, and she once again fell ill, in connection with which the friends came to rehearse one line (well, yes, one, then they left) to her house. Then she falls asleep and has a stupid dream.
In a dream there are: a cat-transvestite-in-boots ( why is an elderly woman in the role of a cat?!), a classmate of the heroine in a wig, who once even pleases the young creature - and us, the audience - with nudity (topless, everything is chaste, do not worry). Pretty boy, yeah. Another scene with nudity - performed by an elderly and bloated man Crivello. Animal cruelty - a live mouse with keys tied to its paw is bitten by a cat on live TV. And in general, very weak work with animals, but there is a real lion. The quarrelsome neighbor of the heroine in the role of the bazaar woman Dvulice (who poorly builds herself an aristocrat). Vertinskaya-future-Anidag as a witch (it would be better to play Dvulice). Clumsy special effects and emphatically sham costumes, which, however, is customary for Rowe, and can be considered his calling card. And postmodern: for example, the son of a miller suddenly remembers Pushkin. And also good rhymed horror films, Crivello still has a good talent, but in the film they are somehow served as bad and harmful literature.
There is no logic or motivation in the dream. For example, what prevented the sorceress, Aunt Dvulice, from abducting the princess immediately, why this senseless marination of the princess in the role of the eternally ill? What role does a portfolio minister play? And how did the princess, who had been in bed all her life, get to dance when she should have developed muscle atrophy? And why is there a line with a living nightingale? He was not needed at all in the plot, and this line took a third of the film.
All in all, the film has something of art in it: a couple of references to Shakespeare and Millar playing the jester. All the other actors here are just crooked, and Millar and twists and plays. But in the role of Aunt Dwulice (the old version), he still does not shine as much as later in the role of Baba Yaga - well, let's consider it a rehearsal. But not enough.
In general, it seems that Rowe was just beginning to find his inimitable style of late fairy tales. The first pancake coma...
Rowe's fairy tales always attract with their incarnation on the screen, interesting characters and magnificent scenery, but I can't say that about "New Adventures of the Cat in Boots". Unfortunately, neither as a child nor as an adult, when I reviewed this creation, I did not like the picture. Let me explain why:
1). Woman as Cat. No, I am quite normal when a man (the same Millard with the inimitable Baba Yaga) plays a woman, and vice versa. But here the emphasis is on the male friendship between Cat and Marquis de Carabas. In this case, Maria Barabanova looked ridiculous when she taught the life of a high-aged man.
2). Indistinct plot - if I adored Sergey Mikhalkov, the writer of the fairy tale, wanted to originalize - he succeeded. Crossing three completely different works – “Cat in Boots” by Perrault, “Love for Three Oranges” by Gozzi and Mikhalkov’s play “Laughter and Tears” – into one is at least strange. As a result - a complete vinaigrette, which has a far relation to the immortal fairy tale of Charles.
3). Uninteresting characters - hardly anyone now, immediately, will name who such talents as Kubatsky, Nosova, Vertinskaya played in this masterpiece. A priori, these names may be associated primarily with another work by Roe, The Kingdom of Curved Mirrors. Here, despite all the pomposity and scope of filming, the actors simply lost in their characters. Except that Millar in two roles can be remembered, and then, with difficulty.
Needless to say, this is an incorruptible, beloved, production by Alexander Rowe. Agree, that's not true. Even in Soviet cinema there were mistakes. And, in my opinion, "The Cat's New Adventures in Boots" is just one of them.
4 out of 10