The Golden Key

The film tells the adventures of a boy made of wood and his friends: Pierrot, Malvina and Artemon the poodle. There is a mysterious golden key, and that key will open the door everyone is after. On one side stands the kind hearted Papa Carlo, on the other the wicked Karabas Barabas, Duremar, Basilio the cat and Alice the fox. The production joins live action to puppet animation, a technique that was an advanced experiment in Soviet cinema of the thirties. Puppets and actors meeting inside the same frame is the most striking thing about the film; even from today the technique looks carefully worked out. Aleksandr Ptushko’s seventy two minute Soviet film was completed in 1939.