The Tale of Tsar Saltan

Tsar Saltan overhears three sisters talking and marries the youngest. She gives birth to a boy. Out of jealousy her sisters switch the letters, and the tsarina and the baby are put in a barrel and thrown into the sea. The barrel washes up on an island. The boy grows to a man in one night; his name is Gvidon. On the island he saves a swan from a hawk, and the swan begins helping him. Gvidon turns into a fly, a bee and a mosquito to reach his father's court. And in the end the swan shows who she is. Ivan Ivanov-Vano directs; fifty-three minutes, adapted from Alexander Pushkin's verse tale. The drawing is done in the line of Russian folk art, and of Palekh miniatures in particular. Ivanov-Vano was one of the founders of Soviet animation.