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Seeing the terrible rift between rich & poor of the populace of
Novgorod, Sadko (Sergei Stolyarov) is looking for a way to bring all
people happiness, & promises to look for the Bird Of Happiness
for them - much to the dismay of the rich city merchants, who fear for
their position once everybody gets rich, & who would much rather see
Sadko executed. So it is not surprising that noone wants to finance
Sadko's voyage & his plans seem to be doomed right from the start ...
until Sadko meets the beautiful Princess of Lake Ilmen (Yelena Myshkova),
who promises him a golden fish should he go fishing the next day ... which
he does, & yould you believe it, he catches the golden fish, with
which he can easily finance his expedition ...
Once seabound, Sadko & his men have to realize that not many people
are too eager inhelping them in their pursuit of happiness, & they are
frequently attacked.
Finally though they make it to Varangia, where the king (Lev Fenin) has
taken a definite interest in Sadko's horse, & wouldn't you know it, he
just happens to have a bird that might be the Bird of Happiness. So Sadko
& the king decide to play chess witht he horse & the bird at stake
- & wouldn't you know it, Sadko wins. But when he goes to fetch the
bird, he realuizes it might not be the Bird of Happiness at all but is
actually the Phoenix (Lidiya Vertinskaya), a bird that can knock out
people using its hypnotic powers ... thank god Sadko has realized it soon
enough & covered the bird's head. But he still figures he might take
the bird home, & thank god for that too, since the Varangian army is
already waiting for him & his men, & can only be defeated by the
bird.
Eventually, Sadko realizes happiness can't be found in far-away places,
in form of a bird, but only at the bottom of one's heart, & he decides
to return home - & quite fittingly too, since in Novgorod, lovely
Lyubava (Alla Larionova) has been waiting for him for all these years ...
but not so fast, on the way home, the King (Stepan Kayukov) & Queen
(Olga Viklan) of the sea want a sacrifice lest they destroy Sadko's ships
in a storm. & the sacrifice is ... Sadko.
So Sadko goes down to the bottom of the sea, & soon charms the kng
& queen with his singing & playing on the lyre, so they promise
him one of their daughters in marriage, & he picks ... the beautiful
Princess of Lake Ilmen, who has once before helped him & since fallen
in love with him, & is, since she can't force him to love her, willing
to help him escape on a sea-horse.
& in triumph, Sadko returns with his to the open arms of Novgorod's
populace (& especially the open arms of Lyubava), & tells them to
look for happiness right here ...
Visually, this film is quite impressive, with every camera set-up
carefully composed, a feast of forms & colours (even if some special
effects in the underwater sequences look rather hokey), only the film's
underlying message - "Don't look for happiness in foreign lands but
at the bottom of your heart" - is a bit too naive but hammered in in
every other scene. Still watchable for the visuals alone.
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find Sadko at adultvideouniverse.com
