THE NEW GULLIVER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 8, 18 August 1939, Unnumbered Page

THE NEW GULLIVER

(Amkino)

Without intending any pun at the expense of the Soviet, I think I might describe a recent Sunday as a Red-letter day, because it was then I saw my first Russian film. This was "The New! Gulliver," which, so one hears, took six years to complete. I can well believe it. If you have ever experimented, as I have, with making a movie with models which have to be moved a fraction of an inch, then photographed, and the process repeated over and over again, you would realise just what a lot of timeand hard work-it all takes. But then the Russians have a reputation for patience. I gave up my little attempt after 100 feet; they went on for nearly 10,000. The result is well worth seeing by all except those who do not realise that the Russians now regard such institutions as royalty and capitalism in a somewhat different light from their own. . Apart from one sturdy son of the Soviet who portrays the New Gulliver, all the characters in the main part of the film are puppets; tiny creations of wire and wax capable of a wide range of ex-pression-and an enormous amount of class feeling. The producers-who, after all, were not primarily making this film for such sophisticated persons as our-selves-have reduced the class war to its simplest terms. The rulers of Lilliput are all horrible Hogarthian caricatures; their king is a drooling moron with a gramophone for a voice-box. The oppressed proletarian puppets, on the other hand, are all bronzed and brawny. With the artful aid of the giant, Gulli-

ver, who refuses to be cajoled by the feeble royalists, the slaves rise victoriously against their masters and build a new heaven on earth. You get the point, I hope. You should, even though you can’t understand a word of Russian. There are English sub-titles just in case it’s a bit beyond you. The worst one can say of the actual story is that if Dean Swift had been a citizen of U.S.S.R. his " Adventures in Lilliput " might not have been unlike these. But the main interest of the film lies in its novelty, the extra. ordinary cleverness of some of the effects. and the really funny antics of some of the puppets. Students of the cineme should welcome it; children not yet politically conscious may take amusement but no harm from it; and only Colonel Blimps are warned against endangering their blood pressure.