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The Scarlet Flower 1952 Soviet Animated Movie: Why You Need To Pay Attention To Film Details?

Saturday, September 17, 2016
(Warning: possible spoilers for the 1952 Soviet animated film The Scarlet Flower (Аленький цветочек, Alenkiy Tsvetochek in Russian))

the scarlet flower, 1952 soviet animated movie, film
While there are differences, The Scarlet Flower (#ad) movie is based on the Beauty and The Beast fairy tale.

The Scarlet Flower is very detailed

In this article, I’d like to commend this animated film for how it pays attention to detail, which really helps to add more depth to this movie as well as its characters.

Here is an example: in one scene, we see Nastenka, the main female character, singing near a body of water while the Beast watches her from afar, hiding behind and in the shadows of trees.

She’s holding a red-colored piece of cloth or scarf or handkerchief, which falls into the water below her. She leans forward to try and retrieve the item.

What you’ll miss if you blink or if you’re not paying attention

If you blink or if you’re not paying too much attention, you might miss this next part because, the next thing you know, Nastenka has apparently noticed the hideous-looking Beast and turns her head away in fright.

But then, that would make you wonder how that could happen if she wasn’t looking at where the Beast was and if the Beast was actually hiding from afar and behind the shelter of the trees.

If you go back to the part where Nastenka tries to get the red item back from the water, you can see exactly what happened.

The Beast’s ugly form is reflected in the surface of the water and Nastenka happens to see it, which is exactly why she turns her head away in fright.

Even if you miss that though, it doesn’t really take away from the story of The Scarlet Flower since some would probably think that Nastenka wouldn’t have a problem seeing the Beast hiding behind the trees because, after all, the audience themselves can easily see him so it might be the same for our female protagonist. What do you think about this?


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by CoDLia (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Red flowers in the image is meant to represent the scarlet flower while the entirety of the pic is meant to symbolize paying attention to details
- YouTube video features a scene from the aforementioned movie

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