Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales is the result of author Clare Kitson’s investigation into the meaning of the masterpiece work that is often referred to as the best animated film of all time.

Yuri Norstein (Moscow, Russia, 1941) is a living legend of auteur animation, and Tale of Tales (1979) is his masterpiece, often voted as “best animated film of all times” by audiences’ polls and/or specialists’ committees all over the world. Despite this all, most animators and animation lovers, especially in the industry, actually know very little about them. Furthermore, if we single out the festivalgoers and specialists who really are familiar both with the man and the work, we realize that more often than not they are puzzled by unsolved questions.

Tale of Tales is the ultimately enigmatic, cryptic film. You don’t doubt it’s great art. You just hardly understand what it is all about. Memories of WW2, a little grey wolf, a baby, roasted potatoes, a meek bull skipping the rope with a girl, a poet with a harp, gigantic apples falling into the snow...

For a big mystery, you need no lesser a detective. Enter Clare Kitson. This British lady has devoted many years of her still young life to culture, animation and the culture of animation; first at the British Film Institute and then, for 10 fruitful years, at Channel 4 as commissioning editor for animation.

When she discovered Tale of Tales at the Zagreb Animation Festival of 1980 (it was awarded the Grand Prix), she realized that her native English plus her excellent command of French and German were useless to penetrate the mysteries of that film. Therefore she imposed herself to acquire an excellent command of Russian too — and Russian history, literature, visual arts and so on.

This book is the result of her long-lasting and deeply sympathetic investigation.

Yuri Norstein — an elusive person whom I never was able to really talk with, despite a reciprocal acquaintance of 20 years — is depicted in depth. A working-class Russian Jew, sensitive, individualist, extremely cultivated, sometimes seclusive, sometimes gregarious, sometimes bursting and authoritarian, stubborn, resilient, deeply impressed by the war years of his childhood. A difficult, charismatic, charming man.

Another unclear matter is cleared up — the frame of his artistic/cinematographic development at Soyuzmultfilm, the state company that was almighty in Soviet Union animation production. We learn that bureaucrats and censors were popping out from every corner, that most people were suspicious of this person who disregarded the stylistic rules dictated by the party, that he himself did nothing to please his superiors — quite the opposite.

On his side he had, nevertheless, the “mafia of decent people” (i.e., his liberal colleagues) and two advocates: the powerful veteran Ivan Ivanov-Vano (1900-1987) and the shrewd navigator Fedor Khitruk (1917), who himself would manage to make his own films his own way weaving among anybody for two decades. (I am happy to get good news: according to the whispers I had collected, Stalinist Ivanov-Vano had, quite the reverse, exploited and hindered his younger colleague).