The Bremen Town Musicians (1969) on Netflix

NR196920mAnimation Family

Troubadour leads a band of wandering musicians: Donkey, Dog, Cat and Rooster. Their palace show goes wrong and the King throws them out, after Troubadour falls for the Princess.

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Netflix4.0/5
IMDb7.9/104,003 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

Plot summary

Troubadour and his four companions, Donkey, Dog, Cat and Rooster, travel together as a band, singing about the freedom they find on the road. They arrive at the palace and perform tricks for the King and his court. Midway through, with the Troubadour balancing upside-down above the animals, he and the Princess blush at the sight of one another. The trick collapses, the Donkey breaks a window, and the King drives the musicians from the courtyard into the woods. That night on the road the Troubadour sings of the Princess and pictures her face in the Moon, and she watches the same Moon thinking of him. The band then comes upon a stone hut where robbers and their leader, a fortune teller, sing of a plan to rob the King.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Bremen Town Musicians (1969)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Only Oleg Anofriyev came to the first recording session for The Bremen Town Musicians, and only to say a high fever stopped him singing. The studio then invited poet Anatoly Gorokhov and singer Elmira Zherzdeva to fill in, and composer Gennady Gladkov sang the guards' song himself.
The original vinyl release of the soundtrack, which included a narrator and was made in fairy-tale format, sold 28 million records in its first two years.
Director Inessa Kovalevskaya said her creative team was horrified by the fairy tale of four retired animals who roam the world, meet robbers, scare them and settle in their house, but they decided to work on the material anyway because the heroes were musicians.
Vasily Livanov added the new characters of the Troubadour and the King to the story, and composer Gennady Gladkov argued that a fairy tale needed love, which is how the Princess was approved; the new characters became the film's leads.
The robbers were copied from Coward, Fool and Pro, the Soviet Union's most popular comic characters, created by Y. Nikulin, G. Vitsin and E. Morgunov and drawn especially from their images in Kidnapping, Caucasian Style.
The Princess in the film was dressed in the actual wedding dress of Yuri Entin's wife: a real bridal gown was used for the animated character.