RUDYARD KIPLING'S THE JUNGLE BOOK (aka ADVENTURES OF MOWGLI)

My official UK DVD of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (aka Adventures of Mowgli (© Roman Davydov/Cyrillic Film in Association with Films by Jove and Soyuzmultifilm Studio/LaserLight DVD – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 3 February 2022 was an animated movie that I'd wanted to see for a long time. So after buying its DVD earlier that same day for just 25p, I lost no time in doing precisely that. It was the 1996 English dub of Russia's classic version of The Jungle Book, based upon Kipling's much-loved novel from 1894, and has been variously released as Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (as with my DVD) and Adventures of Mowgli (the direct English translation of its original Russian title).

Directed by Roman Davydov, and released by Soyuzmultifilm, this film began as five 20-min cartoons released between 1967 and 1971 (respectively entitled in translated form 'Raksha', 'The Kidnapping', 'Akela's Last Hunt', 'The Fight', and 'Return To Mankind'). However, in 1996 they were combined together in modified form to yield a feature-length movie dubbed into English and narrated by Charlton Heston. The same has also been done to yield a full-length version in Russian, but with much less modification involved (see later). This movie has become so famous and well-loved in Russia that in 2012 it was even commemorated on Russian postage stamps.

The English dub features a number of famous voice actors and actresses taking over the roles of the characters from their original Russian counterparts. Thus Sam Elliott voices Kaa the python, Campbell Lane is Baloo, Scott McNeill is Shere Khan, David Kaye as Akela (also the voice of both Megatron and Optimus Prime in various Transformers series and movies respectively), and Dana Delany as Bagheera (more regarding this ostensibly unusual last-mentioned casting later).

Although the standard of animation doesn't begin to compare with that of the superlative 1967 Disney version, it has its own charm, especially the fluid grace of Bagheera and the beautiful jungle scenery. Moreover, whereas the Disney movie plays fast and loose with Kipling's story, and goes all out for laughs, the Russian version is rather more serious in tone and sticks much closer to its source material (as is true of many Russian film adaptations of famous literary works).

Thus it features scenes such as the battle with the red dogs (dholes), Kaa's friendship with and rescue of Mowgli from the monkeys in the ruined city, the etiolated white cobra guarding the treasure beneath the city, the inclusion of lesser characters such as Tabaqui the jackal and Cheel the kite, and Mowgli's slaying of Shere Khan (as occurs in Kipling's novel, rather than his merely banishing of him as occurs in Disney's 1967 animated version). (Incidentally, you may not know it, but Disney has actually released no fewer than five different versions of The Jungle Book – the 1967 classic animated feature film, three live-action features, and the 2016 combined CGI/live-action feature.)

 

A Russian postage stamp released in 2012 that commemorates Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book aka Adventures of Mowgli (public domain)

One startling difference, however, between this movie and Kipling's novel (as well as most other movie adaptations of it), and which initially seemed to me to be both mystifying and unwarranted, is that Bagheera is rendered female (and voiced as noted above by Dana Delaney in the English version) – but then I discovered why. It turns out that in Russian, the noun for panther is feminine! (So too is its noun for fox, which is why the vulpine villain in Russia's classic animated version of Pinocchio is a vixen, not the dog fox that it is both in Carlo Collodi's original novel and in Disney's famous animated movie – the character is named J. Worthington Foulfellow aka Honest John in the latter.)

Also worth noting is that I'd previously viewed the original 5-part Russian original version of this movie, and there are some interesting differences between it and the combined 1996 English dub that I have now watched and own. These primarily consist of the deletion of various scenes of aggression, such as one in which Bagheera takes Mowgli over her knee and smacks him, another in which he cuts off the tail of one of the red dogs, and the blood-red mist scene during which he slays Shere Khan.

Plus there is no narration in the original Russian version, and there are many changes to the music content between the Russian and the English versions. The full-length, joined-up Russian version retains from the five original Russian parts these original scenes and music that have been deleted from the English equivalent.

All in all, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book is a very different but no less satisfying, enjoyable take on Kipling's classic novel from that of Disney, and which I thoroughly recommend to all animation aficionados.

And if you'd like to see for yourself, please click here to view an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book on YouTube, plus here if you'd like to view free of charge and in its entirety the original Russian version in joined-up format currently on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The official DVD of the joined-up, full-length Russian original of this movie, whose title translates as Adventures of Mowgli (© Roman Davydov/Cyrillic Film in Association with Films by Jove and Soyuzmultifilm Studio – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)