Great animator

In Moscow, the director-multiplier Fedor Khitruk died, he was 95 years old. He shot fifteen films under which the childhood of several generations passed; The best of these works are not even outdated and seem to be shot today. All first of all, they recall Winnie the Pooh, and for me a reference cartoon is a “Toptyka”. It once seemed to me that this is a story about the first steps in the knowledge of the world. Now you pay more attention to a lesson in tolerance: adults were horrified by children's friendship, while natural disaster and happy deliverance from misfortune did not reconcile a hare and a bear.

Khitruk belongs to that generation of animators who believed that before the director it was necessary to “grow up”, and a career should begin a career or a phase worker. Modern technologies canceled these professions, and the art of animation has become less needlework, acquiring something and having lost something along the way. And Khitruk, among other things, was also an excellent artist. The Ole -Lukoi he painted from the “snow queen” Leonid Schwarzman is separate from the cartoon, an independent work of art.

Multiplier director Harry Bardin recalls:

- No matter how much I watched the trilogy about Winnie the Pooh, so many times I enjoyed. This is a universal film. Children read the plot, and adults are the humor, the irony that is present in this film. It is no coincidence that he spread to quotes. For many, many years in a row they say: “Where are we going with a heel, a big, big secret”, “wrong bees” and so on.
Thank God, Khitruk was a very good teacher. And those students who came out of its wing were like themselves. They did not try to copy it. Firstly, this is impossible, because too high is high. Secondly, the talent of the teacher is to reveal the individuality of the student. Nobody tried to imitate the cunning.
He was a pioneer of a new wave of animation. Having created the film “The History of one Crime”, he broke through this flesh of Soviet animation, sometimes sent, sometimes slobbering, sometimes fingering with the audience. He paved the ways for him. Thanks to him, such directors as Norshtein, your humble servant and many others appeared. I was not his student, but I am grateful to him for the fact that he trodden the road along which we went further. Of course, this is a wide range: the “island”, and “Vacations of Boniface”, and “Toptyk” are completely different films. An era left with his death. No matter how sad you have to state it.

A few years ago, the Gayatri publishing house was published by the two -volume “Fedor Khitruk. Profession is an animator. " Here is a quote from there: “In general, discussing the films that we ourselves did, or in the creation of which we participated, we discuss the product of these efforts more, but the process of working on the film itself is a very interesting movie in itself. The very interesting adventure itself. Because this is a search, disappointment, hobby, happiness of finds, quarrels (terrible quarrels!), Then reconciliation, doubt. ”

In a long -standing interview, director Eduard Nazarov also said that Khitruk created his films with torment:

- How he worked on scenes! On the beats, I broke the whole film. On musical tactes, I wrote down where what is happening. There are such stripes with numbers and some curves that indicate the highest voltage, lower, blows and so on.
In this entertaining, frivolous genre, he spared neither others nor himself.
Khitruk became a director only at the age of 40, having already gone through the war, having worked for many years an artist in the paintings of other masters. Perhaps that was why he worked so exhaustively - there was no time to run out, it was necessary to take off immediately.