Figure 1.--A Russian reader has provided us an imag of the Soviet-era film, "Advetures of a small daddy". We have no information on the film at this time.

A Russian reader has provided us an image of the Soviet-era film, "Advetures of a small daddy". A narrator (a small girl) tells about adventures of her daddy when he was a small boy. The boy (the narrator girl calls him "Daddy" through a whole movie, his name isn't mentioned) was teased by other boys for he played in a yard with a girl. A biggest of bullies threatened to throw "Daddy"'s new ball (a gift from his parents) under a bus. But then "Daddy" wishing to prove that he is not sissy, "cool" and absolutely not frightened throws his ball under a bus himself. Most of the boys in the film seem to be wearing short-sleeve shits and long pants even though the wearher seems warm. One boy wears short pants and what look to be tights. A reader writes, "Notice that the boy at the extreme right in this photo wears grey long stockings or perhaps tights. Tights were common in Russia but long stockings persisted well into the 1970s for reasons of economy and flexibility (the ability to wear them down or up depending on the weather)." Another factor here was probably it took Russian manufacturers a whole to shift from long stockings to tights. Russian state-owned ibndustry did not adjust as rapidly to consumer demand as in the West. The question of consumer demand is an interesting one. We are not sure to what extent conservative consumers continued to want long stockings.

Filmology

A Russian reader has provided us an image of the Soviet-era film, "Advetures of a small daddy". ` We have little information about the film at this time other than it was released in 1979. Based on novel by A. Ruskin (Russian family) Screenplay & Regie S. Krupko (Ukrainian family) Camera A. Chardynin (Russian family) Art decorators: A. Kochurov (Russian family) & O. Kramorenko (Ukrainian family) Music: B. Savelyev (Russian family) Sound: V. Volsky (common slavic family, it could be Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian or Polish) Lyrics: M. Plyatskovky (the same) Director: L. Borisova (Russian family) Editor: V. Pogozheva (Russian family) Producer: V. Golubev (Russian family)

Ideology

This film is a small low-budget, but it is iteresting on a number of plains, especially ideological considerations. The film deals with an expeience of boyhood across cultures. Pre-teen boys tend to look down on boys who play with girls. Early Soviet films and Stalinist-era films were to a large degree propaganda vehicles. Thus aristocrats and wealthy people were depicted and evil, often cruel peoples. Few nuiances were permitted here. Note that in this film, the "small daddy" was from an affluent family, yet he was depicted in sympathetic terms. Perhaps because his family was not rich in pre-Revolutionary terms, the censors let it pass. We suspect that the censors were becoming less dogmatic. A Russian reader writes, "In the early era ideology was the main point for the Soivet cinema. Lenin wrote, that "Of all arts the most important for us [i.e. bolsheviks] - it is cinema"E His point was evidently that in a country with a big proportion of illiterate people, cinema can play the most important role in a propaganda. But after Stalin's death, especially in by the 1970s and 80s Soviet children (and not obly children) movies were totally split up from the ideology. Certainly, there were movies about revolution and civil war, where "red" were always "good boys" and "white" - "bad boys", but even such films became a usual adventure films, so beloved with all children in all countries, with pursuits, fights, secrets and so on (like cowboys and indinans movies in US). And movies about present-day life, like "Adventures of a small Daddy", were totally free from ideology. I note HBC says, "Soviet films and Stalinist-era films were to a large degree propaganda vehicles. Thus aristocrats and wealthy people were depicted and evil, often cruel peoples. Few nuiances were permitted here". This can only be applied only to movies made in 1930s-50s. They really painted wealthy people like fat, cruel, greedy, unfair, cowards, supporters of war and so on. In fact, not only wealth - ANY symbol of the "west-styled" life, for example jazz, considered by Soviet authorities as a threat to "revolutionary ideology". Slogans like "Sevodnya on igraet dzhaz, zavtra Rodinu prodast!" ("Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he will sell his own Motherland") were very widespread. [HBC note: Note the similarity with the NAZIs who also despised jazz.] But, I repeat, later, in 1960s-80s such propaganda vanished totally (even later communist leaders understood that it was too primitive and ineffective)." HBC is unsure that propaganda entirely disappeared from late-Soviet era films, but there were certainly films made wihout ideological content and the ideological content was certainly more nuanced.

Location

The film was shot in Yatla (Crimea). That is now part of Ukraine.

Cast

The child actors were the following: Daddy: V. Yutzkevych (Belorussian family) Girl: O. Popova (Russian family) Bullies: J. Plisnevich (Belorussian family), A. Kronshtatov (Russian family), S. Kuzminov (Russian family), A. Gavrikov (Russian family) Narrator girl: T. Tomysheva (Russian family)

Plot

A narrator (a small girl) tells about adventures of her daddy when he was a small boy. The boy (the narrator girl calls him "Daddy" through a whole movie, his name isn't mentioned). He was teased by other boys for he played in a yard with a girl. A biggest of bullies threatened to throw "Daddy"'s new ball (a gift from his parents) under a bus. But then "Daddy" wishing to prove that he is not sissy, "cool" and absolutely not frightened throws his ball under a bus himself.

Costuming

Most of the boys in the film seem to be wearing short-sleeve shits and long pants even though the weather seems warm. One boy wears short pants and what look to be tights. The main character, "daddy", the boy being teased, wears suspender shorts with tights. A reader writes, "Notice that the boy at the extreme right in this photo wears grey long stockings or perhaps tights. Tights were common in Russia but long stockings persisted well into the 1970s for reasons of economy and flexibility (the ability to wear them down or up depending on the weather)." Another factor here was probably it took Russian manufacturers a whole to shift from long stockings to tights. Russian state-owned ibndustry did not adjust as rapidly to consumer demand as in the West. The question of consumer demand is an interesting one. We are not sure to what extent conservative consumers continued to want long stockings. Our basic assessment is that long stockings wee rapidly replaced by tights by the mid-70s.

Created: 1:36 AM 4/8/2009
Last updated: 1:36 AM 4/8/2009