A lovely traditional Russian fairy tale film, and a very good entry in the Brumbergs' filmography. The late 1940s and early 1950s was the era of some very good adaptations of well-known fairy tales. In later decades, as directors ran out of classic stories to adapt and just because of stylistic preferences, they often tried to make their fairy tale films more "modern" and "interesting" (a good example is the 1975 adaption of The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats), but there's something to be said for just telling the stories in a straightforward and honest manner, without trying to subvert them or add "modern relevance" to them.

I like the script, the art direction, the animation and the voice acting a lot - nothing to complain about here.

There would be many later adaptations of this story, or a slightly different version of it in which the bear actually kidnaps Masha for a while. For example "Cheburashka" director Roman Kachanov made Little Masha and the Bear (1960), which uses puppets. Sergey Olifirenko directed Mashenka (1992), a bit of a satire in which the little girl's eagerness to help far outmatches her actual ability to do so. And of course, that idea then would lead directly into the popular modern computer animated TV series "Masha and the Bear". The little girl seems to get more and more destructive in each newer adaptation, which perhaps reflects the changing ways in which children are raised and how much they are expected to help around the house, to the point that the little girl's competence and personality in the original story begin to seem very unrealistic.

There's also a very similar fairy tale called "Morozko" in which Grandfather Frost (the Russian "Santa Claus") takes the place of the bear. This was adapted by director Vladimir Degtyaryov in The Wondrous Bell (1956, puppets) and by Ivan Aksenchuk in Frost Ivanovich (1981).