What if I told you we were traveling to 1967 Soviet Russia for a dip into the fantasy film world of swan princesses, giant soldiers, a tsar who looks like he got into mommy's mortician makeup, and a kid and his mom who are thrown over a cliff in a barrel? Get in, loser, we're going to The Tale of Tsar Saltan!
Based on a Russian fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin, but collecting older folk tales, this film stars Vladimir Andreyev, Larisa Golubkina, and Oleg Vidov in costumes that are best described as "Easter eggs, but large." It's visually stunning, but utterly, utterly off-the-wall. For instance, the film opens with a trumpet fanfare and a title animation that's so serious it could lead an army across the Steppes.
Since it's a fairy tale, the story is told from the POV of a book that transforms into a scene which turns into a song.
Two maids are busy spinning yarn, but the third has the easy job of petting the cat (not shown in the above drawing). She is clearly meant to be "the pretty one," but I hope that everyone got along on set anyway.
The three sisters are peeped on by three men as they sing, who wordlessly get into a fight, throwing each other down and chucking snow at each other. We know nobody's name yet but there's already conflict. Kind of a fun, "snowball fight on a day off of school" kind of conflict. But yeah, I don't know why they wrestled except that maybe they're the Soviet equivalent of the Three Stooges, but also peepers.
The girls discuss what they would do if the tsar were to marry them. The larger of the three girls says she will cook great meals for everyone, the nondescript middle sister says she will make a great golden cloth, and the third sister, the one holding the adorable sleeping kitty, says she will bang the tsar until a kid comes out, like a cold weather slot machine.
Things move fast. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, the door busts open, and in strolls the tsar himself. He throws off his coat and one of his servants (one of the guys who was playing in the snow earlier) pops his crown on. The three words that best describe the tsar are fancy, ephemeral, and too blonde. Four words. Whatever, he's too blonde.
He cuts to the chase and says, "I want to marry you, third sister, and you better give me a son by September." I'm not joking. He puts a timestamp on it instead of a ring and does the math on his fingers. September. Baby boy. You and me. It's a date.
Pornstar lashes on this wispy boy.
He tells the sisters that they should leave the house and come to his castle, where they will become the royal cook and the royal weaver, and then they start moaning about it LIKE IT WASN'T WHAT THEY JUST WISHED TO BECOME and then he kicks them because wtf is this movie already. I'm not even 10 minutes in.
The tsar and Russian Larry and Curly remove the tsarina-to-be from the premises and then the sisters destroy the house like some damn vandals. They're pissed and I'm not sure why. They got their wishes? Except they don't marry the tsar, they just work for him with lofty titles? Doing what they wished to do?
SMASH CUT to a huge outdoor Technicolor party where there are dozens upon dozens of extras dancing, doing acrobatics, and throwing snowballs at each other. There is a real bear doing somersaults. A woman laughs as she carries a metal rooster around. People wear masks and jump off barrels. It is off-season Burning Man and it ROCKS. This is just one of like 10 scenes where people are partying their asses off, and it never gets old, mostly because there's always a trampoline hidden somewhere off camera and you just see people launch themselves in the air with zero explanation. Whimsy level = off the charts.
This party is in preparation for the tsar and his new bride to come by and eat a meal "side by side," which is a big event that gets announced and then spread around as gossip ("They're eating side by side!") which really pisses off the sisters who are, predictably, working in the kitchen and the place in a building where people make cloth. I'm sure there is a word for this. I will not look it up.
The set and wig budget must have been incredible.
To nail the point home that all the dialogue in this film is dubbed in, this enormous banquet scene starts off dead quiet. Sure, the mouths are moving, everyone is having a rollicking good time at the party, but it's silent. Then those faces on the right and left of the tsar start singing a quiet tune that gets louder, but I thought something was wrong with my AirPods at first because a party should equal noise and this is downright respectful.
The tsar, in a huge power move, reaches into a plate full of coins and tosses them generously to the crowd, mostly just the people who are in tossing range. I like him although he looks like a religious doll you'll find on the top shelf of an international grocery store.
Oh, the cat is there too.
In the worst foreplay in history, the tsar and his new bride get in bed to play a game of patty-cake, I guess because neither of them has any idea how sex works. This is very similar to a scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, except these characters come off as less real than Jessica Rabbit. Also, the tsar is wearing way too much makeup to bed. He's going to ruin his pillow.
Is it metaphor? The scene ends with them just continuing to play the patty-cake game. This sex scene is rated E for everyone, unless you're really into clapping games, in that case, go off. Oh, did I mention that THE ENTIRE FILM IS TOLD IN RHYME?
Then a muppet attack! Out of left field! New favorite characters! There are big muppet attackers and small muppet attackers. They have some people tied to that tree in the back so they're not just going to kill the townspeople outright, but their motives seem limited to "attack humans" which I can get behind to some extent.
These muppet attackers are numerous and it gave me pause to say, "Holy shit, they have a huge cast of people dressed in these hair costumes" but then as I watched I noticed that the director, Aleksandr Ptushko, got smart with his money and just shot a short clip and reproduced it multiple times across the screen. It works. I was fooled.
I'm including a lot of screenshots because holy hell is this movie well-shot. The colors pop like a children's book, the matte paintings and models are epic in scope, and the lighting is remarkably effective. It's either a case of "a lot of money went into this" or "the people who were making this knew exactly what they were doing."
There is an outdoor shot of soldiers waiting for the muppets, as well as some other people strolling about. Almost every scene so far has like 60 or more people than necessary, but it absolutely works in giving you the feeling of scale. Russia is big. This movie is big. This is Harry Potter but if everyone worked as a team to make Hogwarts prettier instead of fighting with wands.
Some muppets are captured and brought to the tsar, who is told by his advisors that he needs to lead his troops into battle. This is not in rhyme, not sure why they dropped that. Then follows scenes of like a hundred plus extras, all in full fantasy military costume, all parading out from the town. There are so, so many people involved with this film.
The tsar heads out to meet the captive muppet people, and he's such a special boy there are four people assigned to just carry his throne around. That's what money gets you in those days: chair people. His presence seems to do the trick and the crowd of muppets retreats back into the tall grass by reversing the film unconvincingly.
Some time passes as the candy-coated army of the tsar battles the muppets, because the tsarina has given birth in the next scene to a boy, described as "lusty, big and fair."
See? Lusty boy. But the boy seems to be magic, because even though he was just born, he grows in the space of an afternoon to toddler size, amazing everyone. I was wondering how this kid was growing in front of our eyes but I think the bed he was on just got pulled closer to the camera. Movie magic makes it look like real magic! But yeah, the kid was just born and he's like nine years old now. This news gets back to the tsar at the front, which sets off a big celebration including the bell guy, whose job it is to ring several bells at once.
This is an important role in any army.
It's hard to describe what happens next.
Because the child has more or less grown to the size of Ash from Pokemon, the letter finishes by saying he is a monster. This sets the tsar off like a firework. He has the wispiest temper tantrum ever recorded on screen. First he whines about it.
It's not attractive. Then he does this weird bending-at-the-feet thing, so he swings back and forth like Michael Jackson did during Moonwalker.
Then he takes his scepter and smacks the carved lion on the arm of his throne, which then leaps off because it might actually be a lion cub painted white and wearing a helmet. Is it a cat? Is it a lion cub? Dear God it's messed up. He does this with both armchair lions.
Look at the size of the paws and you tell me that it's not a lion. Or some kind of weird Russian alien cat.
Then he takes a drum and bashes the messenger's head through it. It's funny! I mean, it looks like it hurts, but it's kinda funny! That poor guy! Oh, right, and then the tsar orders the messenger hanged, so a little less funny. The tsar then fires off three big cannons that send him flying backwards. This is a well choreographed tantrum, as tantrums go, although the tsar is kind of played as fey and flops his hands around a bit while wearing mittens. Director's choice or actor's choice? We may never know.
Oh, the messenger was hanged, but not killed. Just hung from the drum
The muppets revel in the tsar's pain. They jump around a bunch and wave bones in the air while the entire army cries, even the guy hanging from the drum. It's a touching, yet bizarre scene that is already 50% cooler than most war movies made today, which don't have people hanging from drums. Hang more people from drums, Hollywood.
There's some skulduggery going on back at the palace though. An evil courtier with Ronald McDonald red hair is plotting with the two sisters from before and their mother to do something sneaky. I…do not know what or why. The mother has a daughter who actually achieved the highest rank one probably could in this fantasy Russia land, so she has no excuse for schemin'. The sisters, I get it — they were passed over for the big job and now work in the kitchen and…the castle cloth shop? Maybe I should look that word up. But they can't take the L. They're schemin' real good, but why? They were living in a little cottage before and now they live in a castle with resources and good food and an employer who, while he has flappy arms sometimes, also throws out cash during parties. What's the end goal here?
Anyway, the evil courtier tells his henchman that while the messenger is drunk, to swap the message with an evil one he's cooked up. This plan works because instead of handing his valuable message from the tsar off when he arrives, the messenger gets insanely drunk first. Like, Foster Brooks-style comic drunk drunk. The new, evil message says to drown the mother and son in secret, because of no reason.
They're pretty lax about the "in secret" part because, like every scene in this film, there are like 90 people who hear this message read and twice that amount come to see the tsarina and her son stoically enter a giant fun barrel. This is a ridiculous scene because LOOK A GIANT BARREL, but it's played off as serious as The Ten Commandments. The tsarina also saves some birds from a burning tree. No one comments on this. It means nothing. It is not mentioned again.
And over the cliff they go!
Check back in a week when Pop Heist presents the second half of The Tale of Tsar Saltan! You don't want to miss how this turns out!
