Video: Behind-the-scenes secrets of the non-childish Soviet cartoon "Treasure Island", which is watched with pleasure even after 30 years
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Director David Cherkassky admitted in an interview that he created a completely childish cartoon. It was saturated with parodies of famous films, turned everything upside down, added movie inserts with funny pirates and wrote songs, many of which became as famous as the cartoon itself. Suddenly, it turned out to be a real masterpiece, which today is called a phenomenon, because modern children watch it with exactly the same interest as their mothers and fathers thirty years ago.
Before "Treasure Island" David Cherkassky had already shot "Captain Vrungel" and "Doctor Aibolit". The director was working at Kievnauchfilm when he received an order from Moscow. Central television gave the task to shoot a cartoon based on Stevenson's novel. Everything would be in order, except for one detail - the time for work was simply unrealistically compressed - only two years for two hours of film. The usual time frame for animation is 8-9 months for ten minutes. For this reason, the creators went for a trick - they added the footage to the drawn material, this is how “live” pirates appeared in the cartoon, who acted out silent scenes and sang songs about the dangers of smoking, alcoholism and called for exercises.
The film inserts drew mixed reactions. Someone did not like them at all, seemed superfluous, but some perceived such an unusual decision of the director as a good find, because the songs turned out to be real hits, they are still heard: "Lords, sirs, peers, know the sense of proportion", "About the greedy Billy”,“Jim's regime of the day”,“Chance”. By the way, the poems for them were written by the Moscow poet Naum Olev and the Kiev poet Arkady Gartsman (the future author of many hits by Verka Serduchka), and the instrumental accompaniment was made by the Poltava group “Festival” - the one that recorded the music for “The Three Musketeers”.
The Odessa troupe "Grotesque" created the images of funny filibusters, and the "main pirate" Valery Chiglyaev after that got a recognizable image for the rest of his life. Even now, many years later, the producer, comedian showman and People's Artist of Ukraine is surprised that he is remembered and recognized precisely for this role. If you look closely, you can see the most stellar director of the cartoon among the sea robbers - David Cherkassky starred in the role of the "third pirate". Unfortunately, not everyone likes the film inserts, and when sold to America, for example, they were completely cut out, considering them superfluous. For our viewers, this decision looks barbaric, because the cartoon has lost many wonderful songs.
Despite the rush, the images of the cartoon characters were created very carefully. For the sound of John Silver, for example, the director specially invited Armen Dzhigarkhanyan - his “scary” voice combined with a funny drawing created a unique ironic intonation. The creators of the cartoon literally took Doctor Livesey from life. Actor Yevgeny Paperny, who voiced this "optimistic nihilist", talked about its creation this way:
Viktor Andrienko, who voiced Captain Smollett and came up with his funny whispering, recalled:
By the end of the filming, we worked in such a time pressure that the songs were recorded at night. We were in a hurry so as not to let the studio down - if the deadlines had been violated, all together would not have received the award, but as a result, the quality still suffered a little. According to Valery Chiglyaev, almost all the film inserts were planned to be combined - they should have had much more drawn elements. In the last scene, for example, the "main pirate" was supposed to fight cartoon characters, but it didn't work out. Such insertions of hand-drawn elements into the cinema sequence in the 1980s were a very modern technique - in Hollywood at the same time filming "Who Offended Roger Rabbit."
Nevertheless, despite the lack of time, the director and his team managed to create a real masterpiece, loved by more than one generation of viewers. Unfortunately, the next idea of David Cherkassky was not destined to see the light of day. "Treasure Island" was published in 1988, and further times did not allow him to create another large-scale work. Since the early 1990s, state funding for animation has ceased, and Cherkassky began to shoot commercials. In 2006, the star director tried to create another Star Rescuers cartoon, combining 3D with classic art. The script for the new film was already ready, but, unfortunately, these plans remained only on paper.
Read on about the secrets of creating another beloved Soviet cartoon: Why does Alice look like Green, and here Celentano and other mysteries of the "Secrets of the Third Planet"
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