Tale of Moonlight (1968) Soviet Animated Short Film

by G. Jack Urso

 

From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube Channel.

It’s always like that — if you try very hard to correct your mistake, the world becomes brighter. Oh, so much brighter! — Tale of Moonlight.

I was first exposed to animated films from behind the Iron Curtin in the 1970s on PBS’ International Animation Festival (1975-1976), which I have previously reviewed on Aeolus 13 Umbra. Compared to American animated films of the same period, appreciating their Soviet counterparts requires a shift away from the style pallet of Western Saturday morning cartoon fare. American animation houses of the same period, Disney, Filmation, Hanna Barbara, Walter Lantz, and Warner Brothers, are easily identifiable and, of course, in English. So, navigating Soviet animation, with different artistic sensibilities, cultural context, and in another language, takes a bit of a shift for Western audiences to appreciate; however, with patience one can appreciate the sense of fantasy and whimsy in many of the productions.

One excellent example is Tale of Moonlight (1968). Directed by Irina Gurvich and written by Gurvich and Nina Gernet, the narrator is Russian actor Viktor Khalatov. Gurvich herself is a graduate of Kyiv Art Institute, Ukraine. In this nine-minute short film, a black kitten accidently knocks over its owner’s lamp. Going in search of a replacement, the cat thinks the moon would be a good replacement. Unable to capture the Moon, the kitten returns home, thinking it failed, but its owner, the kindly doctor, is pleased because the light he seeks is the kitten itself.

The story ends on the note: “It’s always like that — if you try very hard to correct your mistake, the world becomes brighter. Oh, so much brighter!”

How much better would our world be if it learned this little film’s lesson.

The translation of the narration below was provided by Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel subscriber MsMythOfDarkness, transcribed in Russian by Gemini 2.5 Pro and then translated to English by GPT-5.

________________________________________________________________

Screen shot from Tale of Moonlight.

Tale of Moonlight (1968) Narration:

Once, an old doctor had a kitten.

He was completely black — black as night — because that’s how he was born.

From morning until evening, the doctor treated children and grew very tired, because he always thought more about others than about himself.

In the evenings, the doctor would rest and always read the newspaper.

But the kitten would bother him, because what he loved most of all was playing cat-and-mouse.

“What’s this?” the doctor asked, upset.

“This is a tale about moonlight.”

“What have I done? I broke the doctor’s lamp.”

The kitten felt terribly guilty, because in the dark the doctor couldn’t read — not even with his glasses.

But where could he find a new light bulb? The kitten didn’t know.

“Maybe there’s a lamp shining over there,” thought the kitten. “I have to run quickly.”

Of course, the kitten was a little scared to be alone at night, but still he ran and ran, because . . .

On the hill stood the Moon — just then rising into the sky from behind it.

The kitten saw tiny fields and seas, and the lights of cities — because when you climb very high, everything below looks small, very small.

The kitten grew terribly bored and wanted to go home, because there was no lamp on the Moon after all. It was simply bright. That’s all.

“I think I’ve finally found a lamp,” the kitten rejoiced, because a star was shining even brighter than a lamp.

And by that time, the Moon had gone all the way around the Earth and returned home — because home, after all, is the best place of all.

“I don’t understand what he’s so happy about,” thought the kitten, because, in his view, nothing good had happened.

“What’s this?” said the doctor. “Why is it so bright?”

“I tried so very hard to make it bright again," the kitten wanted to answer, "but even the Moon laughed at me.”

That moonlit path, perhaps, appeared because all along the way the moonlight was falling from the kitten’s fur.

It’s always like that — if you try very hard to correct your mistake, the world becomes brighter. Oh, so much brighter!

 

●             ●             ●