Barbara The Fair With The Silken Hair

Rating:
Summary: Great for kids and the whole family
Review: This is an excellent example of a Russian fairy tale movie. It was directed (in the 70's or so) by a famous director, Alexander Rou. He, and his pupils, made a number of great fairy tale adaptations for a big sceen. His movies have always been very popular among Russian kids. I still remember them from my childhood. I bought this recent DVD release for my son and I enjoyed watching it with him again.

The movie is neither too fast, nor slow. It has a very nice way of conveying a sense of mistery. Excellent actors. Barbara is a beatifull and good-natured daughter of an old and ugly-looking ruler of the underworld , chudo-yudo ("a freak of nature" is a close direct translation, though in Russian it has somewhat positive connotation). Chudo-yudo wants to find a worthy suitor for his daughter and he looks for one among the princes of the underworld, who are mostly some sort of "freaks of nature" like him. Barbara, however, dreams of a normal ordinary guy from the real world above. Of course, one day she meets one, who gets into the misterious underworld by mistake...

Technically speaking, this is another great DVD release from RUSCICO[...]. The quality of picture (anamorphic wide-screen transfer) and sound is very good. Three languages
to choose from (original Russian, dubbed English and French) and
many more languages for subtitles. I am really thankful to RUSCICO for bringing back to life many great movies of my childhood ("Viy", "Morozko", "Aladdin and his magic lamp", and many others). They are also available on DVD from amazon.