Films with Different Dubbings — Part 2

It seems the first post about films with different dubbings was received quite well — and even back then I promised there would be a second part.

Although by now I’ve realized that calling it just “different dubbings” wasn’t quite accurate. It would have been more precise to call it “different versions.”

3. Rock’n Roll Wolf (1976)

Ever since childhood, I remember those TV “film concerts” — long compilations of songs from various animated films and movies. And almost always, one beautiful song would appear in those programs: “Mama” from the 1976 film of the same name (because in Russian the film was released under the title “Mama”, not “Rock’n Roll Wolf.”). Curiously, the film itself was shown on television quite rarely.

And yet it’s simply a costumed musical (we didn’t even use that word back then), loosely based on the fairy tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats (in English it is usually translated as The Wolf and Seven Kids.) At the same time, there was another wonderful Soviet musical, Wolf and Seven Kids in a New Way, which was released both as a vinyl record and as an animated film.

The movie Rock’n Roll Wolf was directed by the Romanian filmmaker Elisabeta Bostan and was a co-production between three countries: the USSR, Romania, and France. The main roles were played by well-known Soviet actors — Lyudmila Gurchenko, Mikhail Boyarskiy, Saveliy Kramarov, Natalya Krachkovskaya, and even the clown Oleg Popov as the Bear — alongside Romanian actors (how famous they were at the time, I honestly don’t know). The screenplay was a Soviet–Romanian collaboration, while the music was written by French and Romanian composers.

Since the film was a three-country production, it was released in three languages — Russian, Romanian, and… English (not French, as one might expect). In Romanian, the film was also titled “Mama”, while the English version, as has just been mentioned, was released as “Rock’n Roll Wolf”, shifting the focus from the mother goat to the wolf and adding a rock-and-roll flavor (though, to my very unprofessional ear, there isn’t much actual rock’n’roll there).

And this is where things get interesting. Although the cast was the same, separate takes were shot for each language version. In the Russian version, the Soviet actors spoke Russian normally. But for the English and Romanian versions, they learned the mouth movements and articulation, while the actual voices were later dubbed by other actors. On screen, however, it looks as if the characters are genuinely speaking and singing in the target language.

In other words, each scene was filmed three times. According to Mikhail Boyarskiy, the Russian version actually got the short end of the stick: the English version received the most takes, the Romanian version usually got two or three, while the Russian version was often shot in a single take — basically “whatever we get is what we’ll use.” By that point, they were apparently running out of shooting time (and possibly film stock as well).

And since different takes were shot for different versions, the editing was also done independently. So in the case of Mama, it’s actually more accurate to speak not about one film with three different dubs, but about three separate films — all shot simultaneously, yet each in its own slightly different way.

On YouTube I came across a great short video that very clearly demonstrates the differences between all three versions:

And if you want to watch the full film, all three versions are available in full on YouTube:

• Soviet: “Мама”
• Romanian: “Mama”
• English: “Rock’n’Roll Wolf”

P.S. After the film was shown in Norway, it became extraordinarily popular there. It is now considered an integral part of Christmas, and there is also a stage adaptation of this musical in Norway at the National Theatre, titled “Rockeulven”. Here is its trailer, featuring the song “Mama”:

P.P.S. There is also another version of this stage production: the costumes are only vaguely reminiscent of those from the film, but the songs are completely different:

4. Mio in the Land of Faraway (1987)

If you ask which characters from Astrid Lindgren’s books are the most famous, I think most people would first name Karlsson, then Pippi Longstocking. After that, it gets less certain. Some will remember Emil of Lönneberga, others — Kalle Blomkvist. And, strangely enough, very few will mention the boy Mio.

As a child, I came across the novella “Mio, My Son” almost by accident in a library, and I remember it instantly becoming one of my favorite books. Because it felt very un-childlike (and, to be fair, Lindgren’s books are rarely truly “children’s” in the simplistic sense).

It’s the story of an ordinary Swedish boy who suddenly finds himself in a magical land and learns that he is, in fact, the prince of that realm. But there is also evil in that world — the dark knight Kato — whom the hero must face with the help of his loyal friend Jum-Jum.

And you can imagine my happiness when, just a year or two after I’d read the book, a film adaptation of the same name was released in the USSR, directed by Vladimir Grammatikov. In English, the film was given a different title, and it does not match the English title of the original book. That’s why it is known there as Mio in the Land of Faraway.

Yes, this film was also a co-production — this time with the Scandinavian countries Sweden and Norway. Interestingly, the idea for the film came from the Swedes, and it was they who wanted the screen adaptation of a Swedish novella to be directed by a Soviet filmmaker. Apparently, the reputation of the Soviet school of children’s cinema played a role here.

The film has a rather interesting production history. Since an international version was planned from the very beginning, Grammatikov was looking for actors who could speak English well. The idea of casting children of Soviet diplomats fell through, and so he began searching for actors in the United Kingdom. In the end, he cast two completely unknown boys for the roles of Mio and Yum-Yum:

Prince Mio was played by Nick Pickard, and his modest friend Jum-Jum by Christian Bale. Pickard never became a major star, while for Christian Bale this film was his first role in a feature-length movie. Today he is a world-class star (American Psycho, Equilibrium, Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy).

There were actually very few Soviet actors in the rest of the cast as well — most of the roles went to British or Swedish actors. And the Dark Knight Kato was played by Christopher Lee, who was also completely unknown in the USSR at the time. Yes, the very same Christopher Lee who would much later play Saruman in The Lord of the Rings.

But let’s get back to the different versions. Since the film was originally made for international distribution, it was shot entirely in English. Later, Swedish and Soviet dubbed versions were produced, and in both cases the Swedish and Soviet actors dubbed their own roles.

These versions were edited differently as well. The Swedish version matches the English one, with the only differences being the dubbing and a postcard that the characters are asked to send in one episode — the text on it appears in English or Swedish respectively. In the Soviet version, for some reason, the text was not replaced with Russian, so shots of the postcard with English text were left in.

In addition, the Soviet version is longer and has a number of differences, including two scenes that exist only in the Soviet cut.

The wonderful cave scene with flute music appears in all versions — I still love that melody to this day:

And the central song, Mio, My Mio, was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, two members of the legendary ABBA. And here, too, there’s a twist. The Swedish group Gemini recorded this song in all three languages. The English and Swedish versions of the film use the song in the corresponding language. But for some reason, the Soviet version did not include the Russian recording at all — instead, only a fragment of the English version is heard over the end credits. I have a slightly unhinged theory that this was revenge by Soviet officials against Björn Ulvaeus, who, long before ABBA even existed, blatantly plagiarized the popular Soviet song “Sunny Circle”, wrote his own lyrics to it, and performed it at concerts back in 1964. Why not — it’s no worse than any other explanation.

P.S. So, tell me — what other interesting films with this kind of story do you know? I’ll keep going.