This story seems to be very popular in Eastern Europe, because it is related to the very familiar Damsel-in-Distress motif from the Middle Ages (only Europe, while not popular in Asia - where marital relations not free). Within just a few minutes when I posted the subtitles on Opensubtitles, there were about 30 downloads - a not small number for a little-known site.

It's interesting to think about how this lighthearted, snowy film (based on a mixture of northern European pagan and Western Christian folklore) was made at a time of horrific existential war, in a southern Islamic city surrounded by flat, semi-arid plains...

As a film, though - I like the song, and I think the film itself is pretty charming. But as New Year films go, the Soyuzmultfilm studio made a much better one three years later (and a few more classic ones soon thereafter), and I also prefer the 1937 "Silver Rain" made at Mosfilm.

This story still remains topical to these days. It seems that as the quality of life improves, the method of educating self-defense awareness becomes increasingly poor. In 2022, in a large city of Southern Vietnam, a rather unreasonable robbery occurred, but when I saw what happened, so I exclaimed that : This is the phenomenon of The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats. In the security clip, an intruder knocks on the door and threatens to force two children to give him the iPad. It must also be known that that morning their parents went to work and left them in the motel room. Đồng Nai ("deer-field") is an industrialized metropolis, where most residents are migrant workers and have very low incomes. The event also speaks to the seriousness of dependence on technology, because now Vietnam's Ministry of Education is also very worried about this issue.

However, that is still just a small problem and can be forgiven, but what about more complex issues such as : Sexual abuse, labor abuse and especially the use of force against children ? In the last days of 2023, there were at least three events that shocked Vietnamese society and even caused parliamentarians to question the Minister of Education :

1. Poisoning at school : A principal was suspended for 15 days for skimping on rations, causing every 2 students to eat the same small packet of instant noodles ; Some schools have had a series of students having to go to the emergency room after eating lunch ; Many students had stomachaches after buying snacks outside the schoolgate, some of which were found to contain drug powder.

2. A parent blocked the street and beat his son's classmate, forcing the schoolboy to go to the emergency room with a very serious brain condition.

3. A music teacher was locked in class by students, whom used disparaging words and then beat her until she fainted.

This is just a summary, because the real situation is much more serious and complicated. What I always think about is, what is the point of books still being sold on the streets, when no one wants to read them and if they do, they won't understand them ?

This is a relatively famous story in Vietnam, but it turns out there is no official text. I could only find one English-Vietnamese bilingual text that was quite outdated, even the Vietnamese translation was also poor (almost w-by-w). It is said that the film adaptation was shown on Vietnam Central Television (VTV) long before I was born. In my generation, it is not that popular anymore. It's funny, even though it's a very Russian story, but only English students know it.

>>1
Thanks for that, Cynir. Although it seems to me that the problem of the clerk in this film is rather different than in the story you describe - almost the opposite problem, even.
I think there must be a number of films on this site with a similar theme to the problem you speak of, but the one that immediately comes to mind is Ivanov-Vano's animated feature "Lefty" (1964). (although he kind of botched the ending in my opinion and made it way more confusing than it should be - the original story's was clearer and better)

This same story was earlier adapted in 1956 as "The Wondrous Well" by Vladimir Degtyaryov. Personally, I like that version better. It is more true to the original story and feels more magical (though less brightly-coloured). Also, the lazy sister in it is more genuinely lazy and deserving of her punishment than in this one - in this version, she does actually try to do the work, it's just that she never learned how and so messes it up.

The characterization of Grandpa Frost in this version seems inspired by the narrator/grandpa of Leonid Nosyrev's films (many of which aren't on the site yet, unfortunately).

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view), the original story's darker elements have been removed or toned down in this adaptation - and even though it's quite beautifully done, I can't help but be disappointed by that. The godmother is more like a "good witch" in this version (not in the original), and the film makes it seem like her cat unsuccessfully tries to hijack her original plan. But in the original story, Masha's husband was meant to be the cat all along - and it was Masha's rejection of him and of her godmother's riches that leads to her "happy ending" (she originally throws her godmother's key into the well, then the cat jumps into the well after it and is never seen again). Otherwise, it ends like it does in the film.

So in trying to make this version more "child-friendly", the story kind of loses its point.

I read this story when I was in the university. Actually, I have to read it, because it was in the lecture. The theatrical adaptation is also very interesting !

This story reminds me of a very painful aspect of life, but I won't try to explain it clearly so everyone can think for themselves. Around the early 1990s, when Vietnam's economy began to liberalize, an engineer from the Soviet Union hinted at telling his own problem, of course he also fictionalized it a bit. That short story was later made into a telefilm and was very popular, because it seemed to touch the black cat of the whole society.

The story is about an engineer with a very high degree returning from the Soviet Union. However, he has to be managed by several persons who are poorly educated and generally not aware of the times. He wants to apply what he has learned to the Vietnamese context, but he cannot understand that the facility is not capable of receiving that knowledge yet. What's more, his outspokenness could endanger himself. It's simple, because it affects the survival of a system that "steals labor hours, cuts off raw materials, and especially maintains positions to continue... stealing and cutting off". Therefore, those in power begin to use money to corrupt the main character. When they feel they are not successful, they secretly pressure him to go crazy and die.

The last scene of the film also tells one more detail : Two students happened to pass by the grave. They asked the deceased for blessings so they could pass an advanced degree. We can completely imagine the fate of these characters, of course they will follow the same vicious cycle as the man in the grave.

I translated the title "Превращение" from the perspective of both Catholics (biến hình) and Protestants (hóa hình) in Vietnam. This term is less common in Vietnamese society, but is very familiar in religious contexts. It is related to the event "Transfiguration of Yehoshua". In my opinion, Jenő Heltai's story is a bit like Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, that is, they are all parables about the causes leading to the collapse of civilizations.

Modern Vietnamese youth often like to read stories about the collapse of civilizations. What's very strange is that, they don't know exactly what the languages, customs, and laws of ancient and medieval societies were like, and can't even remember the names of any kings, but books about the collapse of Greece, Rome, [monarchical] China, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, the Republic of Vietnam... are always best-sellers in the Vietnamese market, even when they are poorly translated by amateur translators.

Previously, I surveyed the opinions of Vietnamese people born after the 1980s. In general, they did not know how their ancestors used to take exams, and how strict the exam rules were during the monarchy, but they immediately attacked the classical exam system by parodying the satire of a few failed candidates at that time. This is also the problem that is devastating our era, when [it seems] that social morality is being influenced by immoral media, which paradoxically is created by those who are completely senseless but passionate about virtual power.

If anyone knows what is the song at 3:11, please let me know!

Also, the translation of the title is rather more wordy than the original, but it was the only translation I could think of that was grammatical and kept all of the meaning intact (explicit and implicit).

This was one of just 10 animated films released in the USSR that year, 8 of which are currently on the site. The remaining ones are "The Priest and the Goat" made by Lev Atamanov at Armenfilm, and "Three Friends", a rather impressive colour cartoon made at Lenfilm which only partly survives (and isn't publicly available, with only a short minute-long segment being online here).