By 1918, Igor Stravinsky had achieved both international fame and notoriety, thanks in part to his collaborations with ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, for whom he wrote The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). But fame doesn’t pay the rent, and the combination of World War I and the Russian Revolution dealt a serious blow to Stravinsky’s income.
Fortunately, the composer’s plight attracted the attention of Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart, who commissioned The Soldier’s Tale, a theatrical work written to be performed by three actors, seven musicians, and one or more dancers. Considered experimental at the time, today it feels quite approachable. Stravinsky’s blending of classical music with jazz and ragtime is no longer shocking, while the parable-like story draws in people who might otherwise be turned off by the prospect of listening to an hour’s worth of “modern” music.
In 1984, animator R. O. Blechman created an animated version of The Soldier’s Tale for WGBH, Boston’s PBS channel. It’s not a straight presentation of Stravinsky’s work but rather an interpretation that sometimes goes far afield while retaining the spine of the original story and music (Blechman is credited for the screenplay which was adapted from C. F. Ramuz’s libretto).
The story, based on a Russian folktale, involves a soldier on leave who is looking forward to marrying his sweetheart and raising a flock of children. Those plans get interrupted by a curious old gentleman out catching butterflies who’s really interested in buying the soldier’s violin, and eventually they agree on the price: a book that foretells the future. The lepidopterist, of course, is the devil, and you know how things usually go when ordinary people try to outwit him.
This version of The Soldier’s Tale is more clever than profound. An opening montage of grim black-and-white photos of the sorrows of war would have resonated with audiences living in the shadow of the Cold War, but most of the film proper takes a much lighter tone that loses the underlying menace of the original work. I have no direct line to Blechman’s creative process but I can’t help but wonder if his tendency to smooth down the rough edges of Stravinsky and Ramuz’s The Soldier’s Tale was intended to make this film more palatable to American television audiences.
The bulk of the film is drawn in Blechman’s clear-line style, with animation that’s intentionally herky-jerky and looks either charming or cheap, depending on your tolerance for such things. Bear in mind that home television screens in 1984 were much smaller and with lower picture quality than we’re used to today, which would have affected people’s expectations. The basic world of the story looks like something out of a children’s coloring book of fairy tale stories, which is both familiar and also a bit creepy, particularly if you’re familiar with the work of Henry Darger). Departures from this basic style are salted in at key moments, with a number of other animators involved, including Ed Smith, Tissa David, Fred Mogubgub, Tony Eastman, Bill Littlejohn, Fred Burns, John R. Gaug, Yvette Kaplan, Dean Yeagle, Maciek Albrecht, and Janet Pearlman.
The voice actors are a worthy lot, although some names may be less familiar to 2024 viewers. Max von Sydow gets top billing as the devil, although the voice you hear most often is that of Andre Gregory (the “Andre” of Louis Malle’s 1981 film My Dinner with Andre) as the narrator. The Serbian actor and director Dusan Makavejev (a leader in the 1960s-1970s Yugoslav “Black Wave” film movement) voices the soldier while “Brother Theodore” (the stage name of Theodore Gottlieb, a comedian and television personality whose life was too full of twists and turns to be summarized here), voices the drill sergeant and herald. Russian ballerina Galina Panova voices the princess (perhaps a nod to the fact that the role is usually silent and conveyed through dance) and Mike Mearian voices the announcer. | Sarah Boslaugh
The Soldier’s Tale is distributed on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Extras on the disc include an audio commentary track by Blechman, animator Tissa David, and producer George Griffin; the animated short film “No Room at the Inn” by Blechman (13 min.), and “The Hand of R. O. Blechman” (17 min.), a collection of animated shorts and commercials by Blechman.
