The Music of the Animated Cartoon Film Repka [The Turnip] in the Aspect of the Cinematic Text: Experience in Art Criticism

Abstract

Within the focus of the author’s scholarly interest is the animated cartoon film Repka [The Turnip], created in 1936 at the Mosfilm cinematic studio. The invitation of film director Sarra Mokil and composer Vassily Shirinsky, whose curator was Alexander Ptushko, was stipulated by the special role music played in the conception of the film. Not limiting itself to illustrating the visuals of the film, the musical component of the cinematic text provides the opportunity to observed the instrumental theater manifested within its space, simultaneously carrying out the characteristic and the dramaturgical functions. The sound of the music does not cease for even a second, which bears witness to the undoubted skill of the composer, who was able to place the music on the same high level as the visual element. As the author presumes, it is particularly the distinguished status of the musical speech which brought to the reduction to a minimum of the verbal element in the cinematic text, which is realized on the level of written and oral utterances. Against the background of contemporary animated movies addressed to the young generation of Russians (the televised project Mashiny skazki[Masha’s Fairy Tales], Luntik, Mi-mi-mishki, etc.), the work of the creative team with Ptushko at the head is seen as being etalon. Such an experience makes it possible to evaluate the collective work of the film director, the composer and the group of actors as a unique example of actualization of the ethical canon – the semantic core of the Russian folk fairy tale.

Keywords: Repka [The Turnip], composer Vassily Shirinsky, dramaturgical function of music, characteristic and illustrative functions of music, instrumental theater