Wish upon a Pike

Emelya the fool catches a pike that talks, lets it go, and is given wishes: buckets that walk, an axe that chops by itself, a stove that carries him to the tsar's palace, where the princess will not laugh. The Soviet fairy-tale film begins here, with painted sets, live animals and a good deal of snow, in Aleksandr Rou's first feature. Georgi Millyar plays the tsar, and would play every witch, goblin and tsar in Rou's films for the next thirty years. From a stage play by Elizaveta Tarakhovskaya. Soyuzdetfilm, 1938, fifty-seven minutes.