Tale of Tales (1979)

Tale of Tales Review

Tale of Tales is a 1979 Soviet animated short film directed by Yuri Norstein. It is an acclaimed, but overrated experiment.

This director is most famous for this film and a seminal classic ‘Hedgehog and the Fog’ which is much superior to this work. Why didn’t I love this one as well? That is mostly because of its nonsensical dream structure akin to Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Mirror’ which I really did not like. This film is much better than that overrated bore, but it was still too artsy and incomprehensible for me to enjoy it more.

But oh boy, does it look and sound great. Not only did they employ many great compositions and classic music into the film beautifully, but it was superbly shot too and gorgeously animated in every single moment. I loved the entire classical, dreamy and painterly look to the picture plus the symbols all worked for me with the apple symbolizing hope working out most splendidly. The wolf is also very memorable.

Tale of Tales looks and sounds absolutely amazing, but its dream structure prevented it from soaring to much greater heights.