Original Title: Skazka O Glupom Myshonke
Directed by: Mikhail Tsekhanovsky
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: This animated operetta, based on the poem by S. Marshak with music by Dmitri Shostakovich, finds a mouse child who cannot fall asleep to his mother’s, or any other animal mothers’, songs except for a beautiful but dangerous cat.
Cartoon Cat: After seeking help from a duck, a pig, a frog, a horse, and even a pike, the animals ask for the help of a female cat who lives away from the others. The black and white cat has a lovely voice and agrees to help.
A dog sits guard near the mouse’s home and the cat uses trickery to hide herself from him when passing.
Inside the mouse child’s room the cat seems more concerned with primping herself at first, applying rouge and lipstick.
When the cat sings to the mouse child, it is finally calmed into sleeping.
The cat slyly licks and sniffs at the mouse child, then licks her lips.
After everyone else has fallen asleep, things turn sinister as the beautiful cat’s expression becomes wicked and she blows out the candle.
It is then the cat’s true nature is revealed.
The cat spirits the mouse child away, once again sneaking past the dog.
When the mouse realizes her child is gone, she calls for the other animals and they hurry to the cat’s home. The cat is playing with the mouse child, going from sweet-looking to primal.
The cat sharpens her claws and prepares to place the mouse child into a pot of boiling water.
Startled by the entrance of the dog, the cat tries to play innocent and sings to the baby as the dog joins in.
When the dog finds the boiling pot with the mouse child’s clothes inside, he turns on the cat and the pair fight until the cat is chased away and the mouse child is rescued.
Final Mewsings: Cats will be cats.
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