The Enchanted Boy

Nils is a badly behaved boy who one day angers a gnome. The gnome punishes him: Nils is himself turned into a tiny creature. In that state he begins to understand what the animals are saying. He joins a flock of wild geese and flies with them as far as Lapland. The good he does along the way slowly changes him. Vladimir Polkovnikov's Soviet animation is adapted from Selma Lagerlöf's book about Nils Holgersson. It is a short work of forty-four minutes, drawn by hand in the Soviet animation manner of its period. The telling likes to teach a lesson, but does it in the language of a fairy tale. The northern landscapes and the flocks of birds are its finest passages.