The Soldier's Tale

A must for Stravinsky fans. This is a great animated adaptation of Stravinsky's short piece "A Soldier's Tale" ("L'Histoire du Soldat"). The basic plot is about a battle between the soldier and the devil (taken from Russian folk tales). Its very creatively drawn and the music is, of course, excellent.

Anyone who's read many of my comments here know what an animation buff I am. So it was as one that I decided to check out R. O. Blechman's The Soldier's Tale from my local library. Based on compositions by Igor Stravinsky and a popular Russian folktale, this concerns a soldier's post-war trials and tribulations after making a deal with the devil to trade his beloved violin for a book that guides him to his future. Various styles of animation come together to form a mostly cohesive whole with Fred Mogubgub, Bill Littlejohn, and Tissa David among the animators. Among the voices, Max von Sydow provides his charming self as Satan. Might be confusing at times but The Soldier's Tale never gets boring. Well worth seeing for animation fans.

When it comes to classical music being merged with animation, Fantasia immediately springs to mind and for good reason. And The Soldier's Tale is another fine example. The ending is a little too rushed and pat, but when everything else is so outstanding that doesn't matter. The animation is very flexible and hugely imaginative, never distracting from the story and actually helps move it along. Stravinsky has gotten much better appreciation from me over the years and The Soldier's Tale shows how clever- with the incorporation of more than one style of music- and stylistically distinctive he was(Stravinsky's way with rhythms, time signatures and the like and what he did with the neo-classical style is unique). The dialogue is well-written, though with the atmosphere and the simplicity of the story maybe The Soldier's Tale may have worked a little better without words. The story still resonates with how atmospheric and simple it is, it is a lovely and clever written story and one that people can relate to. Max Von Sydow brings a wonderfully distinguished presence too, and the work of everybody else in the cast is appropriately dynamic. All in all, a fine, even outstanding, example of animation and classical music being merged very well. 10/10 Bethany Cox

I rented this film on VHS many years ago and found it striking. R.O. Blechman's animation style is at first very odd and Stravinsky is composer that people either love or loath. This was composed in 1918, only five years after The Rite of Spring. The original texts were in French (L'Histoire du Soldat), but this production is in English. A Soldier's Tale is a modern parable and was a reaction to the trauma of World War One. Max von Sydow brings a distinguished presence to the film and is simply superb as the Devil. If you give this film a chance, you will no doubt be drawn into its little world. It has just been released to DVD and is now available after a long absence.

"A Soldier's Tale" is based upon the theater piece by the composer Igor Stravinsky and the playwright C. F. Ramuz, concerning a soldier who, returning home from war, chances upon a stranger who offers to buy his violin. This stranger turns out to be the Devil, and the violin an avatar of the soldier's soul, and most of the rest of the story concerns the soldier's attempts to regain his violin/soul.

As animated by a team headed by the cartoonist R. O. Blechman, the story has been tinkered with somewhat--introducing some elements not in Ramuz's text--while retaining its essential spirit. I don't think Stravinsky, who conceived the work to begin with, would have disapproved. As he himself wrote, "My original idea was to transpose the period and style of our play to any time and 1918 (the year of the work's composition), and to many nationalities and none, though without destroying the religio-cultural status of the Devil....in fact, I still encourage producers to localize the play and, if they wish, to dress the soldier in a uniform temporally remote from, but sympathetic to, the audience."

Blechman's style of line-drawing transfers surprisingly well to animation; the coloring has the pale look of watercolors, and the characters are wonderfully expressive (with the music heightening emotions at critical points), minimally drawn though they are. The use of perspective is spectacular enough to make me wonder what "A Solder's Tale" would look like on the big screen. Some of Blechman's designs recall Terry Gilliam's use of stylishly retro technological imagery, adding to the sense of wonder generated by the original story.

I first encountered Blechman's "A Soldier's Tale" by way of the ending, which was excerpted and used in the documentary series "Masters of Animation". Even out of context the excerpt just blew me away, and it retained every bit of its impact when I finally saw the complete work a few years later. While not for everybody, this version of "A Soldier's Tale" should be far better known than it is. Long out-of-print on VHS, Blechman's "A Soldier's Tale" is finally available on DVD, and well worth the time for serious animation fans to seek it out.