The Adventures of Buratino (Russian: Приключения Буратино. Transliteration: Priklyucheniya Buratino) was a Soviet children’s musical film, made in 1975 at Belarusfilm.[1]
Directed by Leonid Nechayev, the film was an adaptation of The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino by Alexey Tolstoy in turn an adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Inna Vetkina wrote the screenplay for The Adventures of Buratino as well as several other films directed by Nechayev.[2]
The plot of the film follows Buratino (Italian for puppet), a boy made of wood, who meets the children of Karabas Barabas’ theatre and sets out to free them. In order to do so, he needs to unravel the mystery of a golden key given by the turtle Tortila.[3] Characters such as Harlequin and Pierrot, who act in the children’s theatre are part of commedia dell’arte.
Music for the film was composed by Alexey Rybnikov and the lyricists included Bulat Okudzhava, and Yuri Entin. There was an early interest by the director Nechayev to work with Yuli Kim (then writing under the last name Mikhailov) as a songwriter. At that time Yuli Kim was banned from television, so they turned to Okuzhdava. Okudzhava wrote music as well as lyrics, though only the music of Rybnikov was used in the film. The songs that Okudzhava wrote were serious and philosophical, so Nechayev also incorporated lyrics by Yuri Entin and omitted some of Okudzhava’s.[A][1]
Almost all of the children who acted in the film were from Minsk.[1] Dima Iosifov played Buratino. The adults in the cast were famous actors from the rest of the Soviet Union. Nikolai Grinko played Papa Carlo. Vladimir Etush played Karabas Barabas. Rina Zelyonaya played the turtle Tortila. Rolan Bykov played the cat Bazilio.[3]
A number of musical children’s films followed, by the makers of The Adventures of Buratino, including About Little Red Riding Hood in 1977.[4]
