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| Images courtesy of Lenfilm |
The story of Soviet children’s and science-fiction author
Lazar Lagin’s Starik Hottabych or Old Man Khottabych dates back
to 1938 finding its origins in a fairy tale involving a genie set free by a
Soviet Young Pioneer and the shenanigans that ensue as the three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old
spirit finds difficulty adapting to then-modern life. Emerging in the periodical Pioner before
appearing as a standalone book with pictorial illustrations accompanying the
text, the immensely popular story like most Soviet texts became somewhat
politicized upon further proofread revisions, changing several times all the
way up until 1955 with newer anti-capitalist sentiments permeating the
narrative. Despite the tweakings, the
overall story remained more-or-less the same though the very first version is
decidedly apolitical.
Around this time, the prospect of turning the distinctly Soviet
Aladdin or The Thief of Bagdad into a sparkling children’s
fantasy movie epic came about via Lenfilm circa 1956 with the author Lazar
Lagin himself adapting the story to the screen.
Directed by eventual Amphibian Man and The Snow Queen fantasy
filmmaker Gennady Kazansky with frequent recurring cameraman Muzakir Shurukov
lensing the glittering imagery and right-hand composer Nadezhda Simonyan at his
disposal, the trio set out with Lagin to devise a wondrous slice of fantastical
children’s cinema with just enough sociopolitical sentiment to appease the
Soviet Union and playfully tickle the fancy of adult viewership. More than anything now, it functions as a
snapshot of the Young Pioneer youth movement involving adolescents between nine
and fourteen years old lasting somewhere between 1922 and 1991.
Opening on the Moscow River, twelve-year-old Volka Kostylkov
(Alexey Litvinov) stumbles upon an ancient-sealed vessel while swimming
underwater. Retrieving it in the hopes
of it housing buried treasure to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams, he
hastily opens the bottle and out pops genie Hassan Abdurrahman ibin Khottab
(Nikolai Volkov), aka the titular Old Khottabych, from thousands of
years of imprisonment. Indebted to young
Volka for releasing him, the djinn promises to grant his every wish and after
boarding a flying carpet they travel to India and nearly crash land into a pool
by the now abandoned Sochi Ordzhonikidze Sanatorium. Very quickly, however, trouble ensues when
the genie misinterprets the boy’s wishes and several hilarious consequences
ensue including but not limited to a boy barking like a dog, presenting a
caravan of camels and elephants and finally sabotaging a circus with his own
blend of a ‘magic show’.
Predating Boris Rytsarev’s Gorky Film Aladdin’s Magic
Lamp by ten years while finding its own distinctive Soviet footing replete
with a variety of audiovisual effects that can be found nowhere else on Earth, Old
Khottabych is something of a children’s version of what would or wouldn’t
become Leonid Gaidai’s Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession an
equally screwball comedy though aimed at older viewers. Much of the film’s charm and personality
stems from that of Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR actor Nikolai Volkov who
landed the role after Lenfilm executives screened a clip of the actor in a
Protazanov picture. Imbuing the
character with a grandfatherly charm reminiscent of Edmund Gwenn’s Santa Claus
in Miracle on 34th Street, the character of Khottabych is at
the boy’s beckon call but doesn’t always understand and at times takes matters
into his own hands. The Young Pioneer
Volka played by Alexey Litvinov is a plucky lad undeterred by his peers and
fellow classmates while trying to keep a lid on the mayhem he's just unleashed.
In 2006, the film was remade again, this time envisioned as
an adventure-comedy based not on the original text but on Sergei Oblomov’s
modernized satirical book The Copper Jug of Old Man Khottabych starring Heart
of a Dog actor Vladimir Tolokonnikov in the role of the genie now an
internet hacker. Shortly thereafter, a
videogame of the same name, simply entitled Khottabych, was
released. Despite the armada of original
songs and extensive new characters, the film never quite achieves the timeless
charm of the Soviet picture which for all intents and purposes is closer to the
original text regardless of the changes made to the story since the original 1938
publication. Looking at it years later,
while we’ve seen films like it in our own country including but not limited to
an animated as well as unwanted live-action iteration of Aladdin, there’s
an infectious playful charm in Old Khottabych that somehow sidesteps the
Disney machine finding its own voice and patina as an exemplar piece of Soviet
children’s fantasy.
--Andrew Kotwicki
