Der geheimnisvolle Dolch

Unlike many other Soviet children I didn't see this version of "Kortik" in my childhood, and I think it helped me much now to look upon this movie through clear eyes.

The film leaves an ambiguous impression: at one hand it's a very good intriguing adventure with an amazing discovery in the end, at the other hand we have a movie made after a book written at the times when Stalin and Cheka were alive and yearning maliciously for myriads of unlucky people. As a result we see how the "good" men of Cheka help intrepid Pioneers to make a breathtaking but soaking-ideologically-correct discovery. And of course, the bad guy is a bandit and also a "bourgeois element" -- an enemy of the Soviet regime. Even I, living in the XXI century, am able to feel only the creeps when I see chekists' jackets, what can one say about an Anatoliy Rybakov who has only released his first book in 1947? He couldn't write it in other way, he would be merely destroyed then. As well as the filmmakers for the movie has been released only a few months after Stalin's death.

Though my rating is 7 due to the very strong ideologism, I recommend this movie because the actors' play is really great, the two boy protagonists are absolutely charming and the direction is rather notable.