A Christmas Visit Russia, NR, 10 m, 1959
A Christmas Visit is a weird but gracefully animated Yuletide dainty that should help to make even the Grinch’s season bright. Made in Russia circa 1959 (though it has taken on an even greater glimmer since Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day in ‘91), A Christmas Visit (aka Hobozodhee nytewectbne, or something like that) is set in Moscow during the most wonderful time of the year and tells the story of Koyla, a tiny tot who wants to send a Christmas tree to his daddy, a weatherman who’s stationed in the bleak, treeless land of Antarctica. So he gussies up a small fir (the almost dissonant cutaways to lion, whale, and penguin ornaments will make sense later on) and flags down a cab, but after getting a crash course in geography from the good-humored driver (years of American ‘toons would lead you to expect a gruff, cigar-chompin’ type), he realizes that he’s going to need a more efficient means of transportation. Just then he spies jolly ol’ Saint Nick zipping around overhead in a star-studded airplane. (I’m not sure why Rudolph and the gang decided to sit this one out; maybe the Bumble put Hermey in a half nelson until he fixed him up with a new set of choppers so he could stop having to suck on candy canes and at long last indulge his penchant for reindeer flesh.) Santa, who’s just about finished with his route anyway, loans Koyla his bird, but on the condition that he makes his delivery by midnight. God only knows what will happen to Koyla if he doesn’t reach the South Pole by the witching hour (this bit of info might’ve been lost in translation), but since there are only ten minutes to go before Father Time opens the last door on the Advent calendar, there’s no time to noodle on it—he just needs to haul ass. So he takes off into the sparkling firmament, whooshing past satellites and an anthropomorphic moon that recalls both Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la lune and Winsor McCay’s comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland. (These works, as well as A Christmas Visit, most certainly inspired that bravura sequence from “The Simpsons: Lisa’s Pony” where a similarly drawn moon tries to coax a dog-tired Homer, who’s been working day and night to help pay for Princess the pony’s food and shelter, into stealing a few winks while driving.) As he makes his way further south, Koyla takes in a dazzling fireworks display over Italy, but when he reaches Africa, a ferocious sand storm comes up and breaks the plane apart. Koyla uses his tree to parachute to safety, only to be greeted by a slavering lion straight out of Acrobatty Bunny. The lion chases Koyla across the desert, but he doesn’t want to eat the little guy’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti—he just wants to find out where he scored his lovely Yuletide decoration. After getting his heartstrings royally plucked by Koyla’s sob story, the lion gives him a ride to the end of the continent, where he instructs his primate pals to build Koyla a bamboo raft. And now our pint-sized hero is braving the high seas under a pitch-black sky, reminding you, perhaps, of Tom Hanks’ terrifying island escape in Cast Away. Koyla’s trip is cut short, though, when a mighty wave appears and takes the rickety float to pieces like so many matchsticks. (Whadja think would happen? It was put together by a bunch of butt-scratching monkeys, fer crissakes.) Thankfully, Koyla is spared from a watery grave when a sperm whale (which bears more than a passing resemblance to Monstro from Pinocchio) comes along and escorts him to the icy shores of Antarctica. There a rookery of slow-witted penguins (one talks like Porky Pig) tries to figure out how to direct Koyla to where he needs to go. This shit’s getting hectic; we’re only one chime away from Christmas Day. Whenever A Christmas Visit is on the verge of becoming something magical and heartrending, the clumsy English dubbing, which rarely matches up to the action, kills the moment. Conversations are confusing: dialogue will be assigned to the character whose lips aren’t moving while the other character will be twisting his mouth every which way and not uttering a blessed word. Not that you ought to be concerned with what any of them are saying; the American voice “talents” employed here aren’t worth a tinker’s cuss—the cast of Pink Lady and Jeff could’ve given the characterizations more wit and flair. I wouldn’t know where to start searching for the original Russian language version of this sadly uncelebrated cartoon, but finding the Yankee bastardization is as easy as finding a dishonest man in Washington. A Christmas Visit, which is in the public domain, can be had on a slug of bargain bin Xmas compilation DVDs, like “Christmas at Home” from Vintage Movie Classics and “Christmas Cartoons” from PC Treasures, Inc. The picture quality on these discs is low-grade at best, but even the cruddiest presentation of A Christmas Visit can’t completely stub out its brilliance. December 20, 2009 © Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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