Studio: Soyuzmultfilm
Short Synopsis
A lonely woman longs for a child, and a magic seed grows into a flower; when it opens, a tiny girl, no bigger than a thumb, is sitting inside. She is Thumbelina, and she sleeps in a walnut shell and rows a leaf boat across a dish of water. One night a toad steals her to marry her ugly, croaking son and leaves her on a lily pad in the river; the fish free her, and she drifts away downstream. A cockchafer beetle carries her off, but his friends mock her for not looking like a beetle, and he abandons her. Through the summer she lives alone in the woods, and when winter comes she shelters with a kindly field mouse, who plans to marry her to her rich, blind, sun-hating neighbour, the mole. In the mole's tunnel Thumbelina finds a swallow lying frozen, apparently dead; she nurses him secretly through the winter. In spring, on the eve of her wedding to the mole, the swallow carries her away to a warm country of flowers, where she meets the tiny prince of the flower people. They marry, and she is given wings.
Why It Matters
- The design is strikingly modern for a fairy tale: flat, angular shapes, bold blocks of colour, and a slender Thumbelina in a red tutu dancing across lily pads and snowfields, against comic, rounded supporting characters, the toads, beetles and the self-satisfied mole, who keep the story from becoming too sweet.
- Leonid Amalrik was one of the founding directors of Soyuzmultfilm, and this adaptation, with a script by the playwright Nikolai Erdman, became one of the best-known Soviet versions of Andersen. It circulated widely abroad in dubbed versions and remains a classic of Soviet children's animation.
Notes and Trivia
- Soyuzmultfilm adapted Andersen many times; this version is among its most faithful to the original tale.
- Its running time of about half an hour places it between a short and a feature, a common format at the studio.
- See also: The Insects' Christmas (1911), Soviet Toys (1924).