Saturday, July 7, 2007

Help me identify...

Here's something that came with a recent purchase. An ASTRA TV 16mm print retitled THE MAGIC FISH. Naturally, I thought this would be the 1934 TerryToon but it is not.
I really think this is a European cartoon. In some scenes it appears the characters are speaking, but Astra replaced the soundtrack with generic music (probably to mask a foreign-language track).
Maybe one of you faithful bloggers can help me identify this cartoon.

Here is an introduction title, probably added for this version or a previous US reissue...(sorry for the bad scan)

It reads: "In a certain Kingdom, a poor peasant named Emylia caught a pike. The kind Emylia let the pike go free and the fish promised if he would but say "By the pike's will, by my desire"--- Emylia's every wish would be granted."
The Fish:

Our Hero:














Basically, this fisher boy catches a pike and certain things around the boy (his water buckets, his axe) become magical and perform tasks on their own. I forget if the King is jealous or angry for other reasons, but the King and his guards chase the boy into his cabin. Of course there is a happy ending.

3 comments:

Jerry Beck said...

It's obviously a film based on the Russian folk Tale THE MAGIC PIKE. It's not the Russian one made by Ivan Ivanov-Vano in 1958. It looks like Herge art, or early Jiri Trinka. Researching all the foreign cartoons that were bootlegged and shown on U.S. TV (and sold as home movies) in the 1950s is a tall task that still needs to be done.

Tommy José Stathes said...

Thanks, Jerry. Fred Ladd should have an intimate knowledge of the reissuing of foreign cartoons for American television...however when asked, he knew nothing about Astra TV.

Michael Sporn said...

It's definitely not Trnka. I have several Russian histories on animation and haven't found it in any of them. I have a book on Belgian animation and have a feeling it might be from one of their early studios. Unfortunately that books in storage just now.