MartinHafer In the 1950s and 60s, several Hollywood studios bought international films and re-dubbed them into English. In many cases they also cut the films to pieces and rearranged them in a sad attempt to make them more marketable. In EVERY case I can think of, the results left a lot to be desired. A few of these, such as the re-dubbing and reworking of "Godzilla" (where Raymond Burr seemed to be added rather randomly in order to 'Americanize' the action), worked well enough. But most were simply awful. The list of terribly dubbed stupid international films is very long indeed, with films like "Invaders from Space" and cartoons like "Alakazam the Great" and "Pinocchio in Outer Space". While "The Snow Queen" isn't as bad as the three films I just mentioned, it is pretty bad. Why is it so bad? Well, much of it is because when it comes to showing it to American kids of the day, the material is pretty dull stuff. And, with excellent Disney productions to compare it to from the same time period (such as "Sleeping Beauty" and "101 Dalmatians"), the film just comes up very, very short and the kids would have clearly demand Disney! The film begins with a prologue starring Art Linkletter and a bunch of not particularly talented kids (one who is named, I kid you not, 'Dick Johnson'- -so much for making this a family-friendly film). They are all enjoying a supposedly impromptu and TOTALLY SCRIPTED Christmas morning. You wonder WHO all these kids are and WHY are they at Linkletter's home and WHERE are the parents!! It's all done in an attempt to legitimize the film which follows. In other words, back in the late 50s, Linkletter was a beloved American TV star...and if HE loved the film, it must be good...right?! Well, no. I just assume that Universal Studio paid him a gob of cash to hang out with the kids and promote a crappy Soviet cartoon. As for this Russian film, it's well animated compared to some films of the day (by the late 50s, standards in animation were dropping world-wide). Not as good as Disney, but not bad for the day. Sure, the humans often had creepy expressions but again I make allowances for this because of the period in which it was made. The story is about the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen. It's actually a lot closer to his story than the recent Disney film "Frozen", though I doubt if many folks will really care. The story is about two adorable (?) kids who love each other--Kay (a boy) and Gerta. Unfortunately for them, Kay makes a mistake of making fun of the Snow Queen and she responds by hardening his heart and making him a total jerk towards poor Gerta. Then, the Queen steals the boy and takes him to her frozen kingdom to be her friend. As for Gerta (and this is the ONLY thing I really liked about the film), she wasn't about to stay back home and cry--she set out on a long adventure to get her beloved Kay. The path leads to many adventures (some involving nice fairy tale creatures and some involving fairy tale jerks) and eventually Gerta's persistence is rewarded. In many ways, it reminds me of the wonderful children's book "The Paper Bag Princess" but is so dull and heavy-handed that its great message is lost because the film is so charmless. The bottom line is that I cannot see many kids enjoying this. Younger ones especially will squirm in their seats if they're made to watch this one and older ones simply will wonder why they didn't just watch something else. You should definitely consider seeing something else.

Rectangular_businessman I consider "The Snow Queen" from Hans Christian Andersen to be one of the most beautiful fairy tales ever written: The story is incredibly inspiring and is also wonderfully told, having a level of subtlety and lyricism that made it much more complex that it could seem at first sight.Sadly, most of the cinematic adaptations made of that story usually fail to capture the charm and inspiring qualities from its source material, keeping only the most basic aspects of the plot or changing it completely (I think that the most notorious example of this would be "Frozen", the most recent Disney production which despite being supposedly "inspired" by The Snow Queen, it actually doesn't have anything in common with that fairy tale.Fortunately, this is not the case of this film, which shows the best qualities of the Golden Age of Russian Animation: An exquisite and flawless artwork, a charming characterization that makes this movie to be incredibly enjoyable to watch from beginning to end...But above all, it best quality is to keeps the "heart" of the original fairy tale in a way never done by any other adaptation of the same story, being for that reason my favorite audiovisual version of this timeless tale of love and friendship.This is the kind of stuff that computers would be never able to do, disregard of all technological development from the recent years. Is easy to see why the great Hayao Miyazaki considered this an inspiration to continue working on the animated industry. Considering that it was thanks to this movie that we were lucky to have many of the masterpieces done by him makes it even better.10/10

TheLittleSongbird For as long as I can remember, I have loved Hans Christian Andersen's stories. While some have a touch of darkness to them, they are also poignant and charming with great characters and settings. The Snow Queen is no exception, and as a story pretty much epitomises all those qualities. This Russian animated version is fairly faithful to the spirit of the timeless story, and is wonderful on its own terms.The animation is simple, yet very effective. The backgrounds and colours are pleasing, and the characters are all drawn well. Animation-wise, what really impressed me was the animation on the Snow Queen herself, her appearance alone makes her icy and chilling. The music is just stunning, sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes it's haunting and sometimes it is melancholic.For me, the story is one Andersen's best, and with many effective scenes and most of the crucial scenes of the story there and maintaining their impact this animated film does it justice. The script is wonderfully poetic, and the characters are engaging with Gerda determined and headstrong and the Snow Queen the best-realised being as chilling as she is in the story.The voice work is also good. The English/American voice cast are good, with June Foray and Paul Frees being the most effective and Gerda was surprisingly emotive, but in my eyes the original is more authentic with the voice actress of the Snow Queen especially wonderful. Overall, enchanting animated adaptation, and one of the better adaptations out there too, there aren't many but this one is the most faithful in spirit. 10/10 Bethany Cox

wonderproductions This is one of the best-loved animated features in Russia, richly animated by the renowned Soyuzmultfilm studio. The dubbed U.S. version was released by Universal in 1959 and was widely shown on local TV stations, especially at Christmas time. A hokey prologue was added for the U.S. release starring TV host Art Linkletter and some extremely polished and starched youngsters, including Billy Booth, who played Dennis the Menace's pal Tommy Anderson on the TV series. The kids literally quote lines from Linkletter's best selling book "Kids Say the Darnest Things." Some videos of the movie do not include this prologue at all. The confusion arises when the director of the prolugue is credited with directing the movie! Several low-budget VHS tapes of this gem have been released, and to this day I have not found one with either a satisfactory film print or sound track. It's a shame, because once you see this film, you never forget it.