A solid film by Tsehanovskiy (the second film he directed together with his wife), though I'd say not as good as most of his earlier ones. He was in his 70s by this point, and nearing the end of his career. He, perhaps, felt himself compelled to change his visual style compared to his films of the late 1940s and 1950s (this is much more sparse and stylized), but underneath that outer layer he still seems to have heavily used rotoscoping for much of the animation. It's especially noticeable in the dancing scenes.

Like in his 1944 film Telephone, he once again chose to include live action footage of the writer himself reading his own verse.

Tsehanovskiy reuses a famous scene from his first film, The Post (1929) a number of times, when the Fox and the Beaver are traveling in a train.

I don't know, I have some trouble judging this one. It's a good adaptation of the source material, and fleshes it out nicely, but also stays quite safe throughout. It lacks both the bold, grotesque drawing styles of his early films and the quiet, naturalistic beauty of his middle period.