Here’s a category I’ll bet you didn’t know about: Eastern made adaptations of the 19th Century Romanian fairy tale “THE GOAT WITH THREE KIDS” by Ion Creangă. The tale was the subject of a 2019 short by writer-director Victor Canache, who in 2022 adapted it into a feature, with humans in place of the goats and wolves that populated the story.
An earlier attempt at transposing Creangă’s tale occurred in the 1976 rock musical MAMA, a Romanian-Soviet-French co-production that elicited performers from the Moscow State Circus, the Moscow Circus on Ice and the Bolshoi Ballet.
MAMA’s music and imagery are of the psychedelic rock variety. Clearly the film’s backers were seeking an international—western, specifically—audience, turning out no less than three different versions, one of them an English language dub entitled ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WOLF. The film was popular in Europe and Asia (having been awarded the Silver Cup at the Children’s Film Festival in Venice), but its resonance with westerners is indicated by the fact that the one and only soundtrack album was released in Thailand, and that it hasn’t amassed much of a cult following.
In MA-MA’s universe dozens of costumed performers wearing various animal masks—goats, foxes, rabbits, owls, donkeys, parrots and wolves are represented—carouse in a rustic outdoor milieu and various indoor sets with painted backdrops. Most of the dialogue is sung by (in the ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WOLF version) British accented dubbers as, more often than not, the characters are in the midst of dancing and leaping around. A narrative of sorts eventually makes its way to the fore, positing that a Big Bad Wolf named Suru (Mikhail Boyarsky), upset that he has no children of his own, is seeking to kidnap the five offspring of the sweet natured Mama goat Rada (Lyudmila Gurchenko).
When Rada unwisely elects to leave the kids alone, Suru sees his chance. Rada promises to sing a song when she returns so the kids will be certain it’s her, not realizing the wolf is outside her home taking notes. Suru tries twice to impersonate Rada, but makes little attempt at concealing his voice, and so doesn’t get let in.
Yet when Rada finally returns home she learns her eldest son Matei (Matei Opris) has, against the council of his siblings, wandered off. This make Rada sad, and so the next time she leaves and tries to return the kids don’t recognize her voice through the tears. Suru, however, does finally succeed in impersonating Rada, and upon being let in snatches one of the children. For the kid’s return Suru demands an exorbitant ransom, the handover of which occurs for some reason at an ice skating rink. Not to worry, though, because, this being a kids’ movie, an especially sappy happy ending is on the sickly sweet horizon.
In a film packed with dancing extras jammed into seemingly every scene, as well as miscellaneous music numbers not connected with the story that take place in a spectral discotheque (in which flashing lights and glitter are added to the cacophony) and ice skating footage, it would take a skilled director to cut through all the chaos. Ken Russell would have done wonders with the material, but director Elisabeta Bostan, a Romanian fantasy film specialist (with 1969’s KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS/ Tinerețe fără bătrînețe and 1972’s VERONICA to her credit), isn’t up to the challenge. The film often feels like a kid-friendly MARAT/SADE, or perhaps an adult-oriented H.R. PUFNSTUF, of interest as a curiosity and little else.
Vital Statistics
MAMA (ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WOLF)
Mosfilm/Ralux Film/Romania Film
Director: Elisabeta Bostan
Screenplay: Yuriy Entin, Vasilica Istrate
(Based on a story by Ion Creangă)
Cinematography: Ion Marinescu, Kostea Petricenko
Editing: Cristina Ionescu, Yolanda Mîntulescu
Cast: Lyudmila Gurchenko, Mikhail Boyarskiy , Oleg Popov, Saveli Cremerov, Valentin Manohin, George Mihaita, Florian Pitis, Vera Ivleva, Evgeniy Gerchakov, Natalya Krachkovskaya, Marina Polyak, Violeta Andrei, Paula Radulescu, Vasile Mentzel, Liliana Petrescu