Tale of Tales (Russian: Сказка сказок, Skazka skazok) is a 1979 Soviet/Russian animated film directed by Yuri Norstein[1][2] and produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow.[3] Having won numerous awards, acclaimed by both critics and animators, various polls have recognized it as the greatest animated film of all time.[4] The film was analyzed in the 2005 book Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey by Clare Kitson.
Tale of Tales, like Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror,[5] attempts to structure itself like a human memory. Memories are not recalled in neat chronological order; instead, they are recalled by the association of one thing to another, which means that any attempt to put memory on film cannot be told like a conventional narrative. The film is thus made up of a series of related sequences whose scenes are interspersed between each other. One of the primary themes involves war,[6] with particular emphasis on the enormous losses the Soviet Union suffered on the Eastern Front during World War II. Several recurring characters and their interactions make up a large part of the film, such as the poet, the little girl and the bull, the little boy and the crows, the dancers and the soldiers, the train, the apples and especially the little grey wolf (Russian: се́ренький волчо́к, syeryenkiy volchok).[7]
Yuri Norstein wrote in Iskusstvo Kino magazine that the film is "about simple concepts that give you the strength to live."[8][9]
In addition to the original score composed by Mikhail Meyerovich, this film makes use of several other pieces of music. Excerpts from works by Bach (notably the E flat minor Prelude BWV 853 (from The Well-Tempered Clavier)) and Mozart (the Andante second movement from Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, K41) are used, and the World War II era tango Weary Sun, written by Jerzy Petersburski, features prominently. However, the most important musical inspiration is the following traditional Russian lullaby, which is included in the film in both instrumental and vocal form.
Many situations in the film actually derive from this lullaby, as well as the character of the little grey wolf. Indeed, the film's original title (rejected by the Soviet censors) was The Little Grey Wolf Will Come.
The name Tale of Tales came from a poem of the same name by Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet that Norstein loved since 1962.[4][10]
Australian electronic duo The Presets paid homage to Tale of Tales in the music video for their song "Girl and the Sea" from their album Beams.[12]
