This review will necessarily be long, as it is for a miniseries, not a movie, and it is based on my second favorite book in the world, which I love so much I went halfway across the country to explore the real places on which the setting is based. The book is Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury, and the miniseries is the Russian production Vino iz oduvanchikov from 1997. From what I have heard, Bradbury’s works were translated into Russian many years ago, for which he was never paid, and although he receives screen credit at the beginning of each episode, it’s doubtful he was ever paid for this adaptation as proper channels were not followed.

The movie is entirely in Russian with no subtitles. The extent of my Russian knowledge consists of the words for “Yes,” “No,” and “Dandelion Wine,” and that’s about it. The setting is definitely in America and most likely the same region of upper Illinois as the book, as Chicago is mentioned. The signs in the arcade and on shops are in English and also on Junkman Jonas’s wagon, almost. It reads “Yery Comfis for Use,” then a small indistinct word, maybe “No,” followed by “Spnsp From Buzzard.” Somehow I don’t think this is supposed to be Latin or anything but a failed attempt at English. The time is most likely the 1920s or 1930s (the book is set in 1928). The best indication would be if someone could identify and date the vintage automobiles. The names are preserved exactly from the book, with the possible exception of Helen Loomis, whose name seems to be Parsons, that is if I correctly understood what I heard. Perhaps her name means something unsavory in Russian and so was changed. Also, Great-Grandmother, unnamed in the book, is given the name Mrs. Bentley which is actually another character in Dandelion Wine whose story is not featured in the miniseries. The names are given Russianized pronunciations but not translated, that is, “John” is “John” and not “Ivan.” Obnoxious Aunt Rose is seen reading Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party, which might be a humorous touch for Russian viewers who can read English titles.

I found two copies of this film, one on the Russian site ok.ru and one on YouTube. The ok.ru copy has some Russian phrase pasted into the top right hand corner, not occasionally like a network or channel logo but in every single shot. It is enraging to see a great work of art so defaced and would have been a huge distraction even in bad movie. Some kind soul blurred this out in the YouTube copy so I strongly suggest watching it. The picture and sound are pretty good.

As far as locations, I didn’t notice anything about the architecture of the outside of the houses that would eliminate the possibility of them being in 20th Century America, but I am not an architecture expert. The interiors strained credulity. The houses are huge, beautiful, and lavish. Douglas Spaulding, the main character, and his brother Tom have a spacious bedroom, beautifully decorated and furnished with expensive toys. Large and colorful dandelion murals are painted on glass panels on the door and set into the wall (they cannot properly be called windows as they are on an interior wall) which are beautiful but unlikely. Ray Bradbury’s entire childhood home could very likely fit comfortably in Leo Auffmann’s garage. The houses are simply beyond the means of lower middle to middle class 20th Century Americans but are lovely to look at. The scenery is lush and lavish and beautifully filmed, with many lovely shots of dandelions as there should be. Again, it could pass for taking place in America.

The casting was perfect! Andrei Novikov shines as the thoughtful, dreamy, and sensitive Douglas Spaulding. Sergei Kuznetsov is wonderful as little chatterbox Tom Spaulding, gushing fountains of words on all subjects. Lidiya Dranovskaya is brilliant as Great-Grandmother, who has been named Mrs. Bentley. Liya Akhedzhakova is especially expressive as Lena Auffmann, going from discouragement to overflowing joy to abject unhappiness.

The expressiveness of the acting really helped, as did having read the book three times, with enough other individual story readings and watching and listening to TV and radio adaptations to amount to a fourth time. As my last full reading was 35 years ago, I struggled to remember certain details, but overall found this an accurate adaptation, that is, without being able to understand over 99% of what was said. Besides proper names, the words which are the same in Russian as in English or similar enough for me to catch them were “machine,” “photograph,” “Madame Tarot,” “Mexico,” “Mama,” “My brother” and “Chicago.” I thought I heard “number” and “doctor” but I was very likely mistaken.

This miniseries contains long stretches of dialogue. The hardest to follow is the story “The Swan,” because it consists entirely of Bill Forrester and Helen Loomis (or possibly Miss/Mrs. Parsons) talking. “The Happiness Machine” contains an extreme amount of dialogue and I felt it could have got to the point of the story in less time and left time for something else. Lidiya Dranovskaya obviously gave a powerful performance in “The Leave-Taking” with possibly the longest monologue in the series. Great-Grandmother’s speech in Dandelion Wine is one of the most beautiful passages in all of literature in any language, and it would have been nice to see how closely the Russian followed the original English, but alas no subtitles. I heard a rumor about an English version being released in Canada but I can’t find a copy. It is to be hoped whoever did it consulted the book, as translating from English to Russian and back might well result in disaster.

Douglas and his friends John and Charlie visit Colonel Freeleigh, played by Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, who tells them of the demise of supposed bullet catcher Ching Ling Soo and relates an American Civil War battle so vividly the boys feel trapped in the action.

There were a few changes, such as in “The Tarot Witch,” in the book only Douglas and Tom were involved, while in the miniseries several friends participated. Friend Charlie Woodman has a larger role and many more lines than in the book, particularly in the story “Statues,” in which he is unaccountably switched with John Huff, although John is present, so Charlie takes John’s role in the action and John is sidelined with Charlie’s role. Otherwise the action is pretty close. Not much is made of Douglas’s writing but he is shown with a notebook and pencil. The famous “The Sound of Summer Running” is not dramatized but Douglas is shown wearing brand new white tennis shoes.

Fanciful touches include a sleeping Douglas levitating around the house at the opening of each episode, and Great-Grandmother ascending to Heaven in a hot air balloon, accompanied by a young man wearing a Confederate uniform, which is unusual as the family were from Illinois. Perhaps Great-Grandmother was meant to have lived in the South when younger, which might have been explained in her monologue. By the way, the portrait she addresses at the end of her speech is an actual Civil War image depicting Edwin Francis Jemison, a Confederate combatant who was killed on July 1, 1862, at the Battle of Malvern Hill in Henrico County, Virginia, at the young age of 17, and is one of the most famous images from the American Civil War.

No film can possibly begin to approach the excellence of this wonderful book. Several incidents are included which I have not mentioned, but of necessity many more events are omitted. Overall this film is beautifully done and I would recommend it but it helps to be either really familiar with Russian or with the book or hopefully with both.

Several years ago, we visited Waukegan, Ill., and walked the street around the original Bradbury home of the earliest RB days. We visited the paths and crossed a walkway near the stream where the Lonely One was said to meander. The entire area has a powerful Dandelion Wine vibe!

RE: (* Scroll down a bit. Open > See Photos)

https://www.google.com/search?...RUlDQWdJQ3N6LS1SbXdF

Ironically, earlier today I was digging into some of the Forum's "Treasure Chest" of Mr. Bradbury's influences on readers of several generations.
Here is a flashback to a Forum Entry I posted just after I had concluded my teaching career. Dandelion's Russian analysis (above) of DW brought this to mind, so I searched back for the consideration of the style in which Dandelion Wine would be properly captured onto American big screens:

"I taught To Kill A Mockingbird and Dandelion Wine countless times. Two tales that captured American life of the 20's and 30's as well as any stories ever written. Two stories I always admired and looked forward to reading with students, even after all of the repetitions from year to year!

My consideration as to the status of Dandelion Wine being brought to the Big Screen (as often posted about here) is It would need to be done, as most agree, with the magic and tone of To Kill A Mockingbird."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

As a follow-up to dandelion's movie review, I thought I would include the link below, which will take you to the Russian film version of DANDELION WINE available on YouTube. Incidentally, you can access English subtitles by clicking on the gear-shaped, six-pronged icon in the lower right hand portion of the screen, and then selecting Russian to English subtitles. However, be forewarned that the translation from Russian to English that is provided is not great, and often does not seem to make much sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkCGqRvkFos

Fifteen or more years ago I somehow, somewhere obtained a copy of this film on DVD. When next I visited the dandelion yellow house in Cheviot Hills I made mention of this to Mr B. He exclaimed that he had never seen it and could I make him a copy? I did so, and delivered it back. We never really spoke of it again, so I am unsure what he thought of it - if he watched it at all! - but I confess that I never watched my copy as the Russian language scared me off. I'll try again with these subtitles Richard mentions on the YouTube.

It took me a long time to get around to it but it was kind of fun guessing by the action what story it was in and how true to the book it was.

Some time after watching Vino iz oduvanchikov in Russian, someone (thanks, Richard!) informed me that auto translations are available on YouTube. You pause the video and go to the gear which appears in the lower right hand corner. Click on it, choose “auto-translate” and the language you want it translated to. This has worked wonderfully for every Russian film I have watched except for one which for whatever reason did not have this service available. The subtitles are not perfect. Sometimes they give a pretty close approximation of what the person is probably saying, but at times they quit completely, especially if a person speaks very rapidly. At other times they don’t make sense and come up with some real gems, such as: Tom while bringing Douglas apples: “such a hole when you sit in a box and lick them.” My absolute favorite is when Tom, while picking dandelions, tells Douglas, “to write down everything that this is a jeep wrangler.” I can guarantee that this is not in the book or in the movie either.

First of all, I was just as happy to have watched Vino iz oduvanchikov the first time without subtitles so I could concentrate on the magnificent beauty of the cinematography. The music is also exquisite which I noticed more on a second viewing.

Obviously with having at least a guideline of what people were saying I was able to gather a lot more information and pick out more words. The words for “machine” and “car” must be similar because the subtitles kept referring to the Happiness Machine as a car. Regarding Douglas’s white sneakers, “The Sound of Summer Running” is not dramatized but Douglas does mention buying new sneakers.

I was wrong about Great-Grandmother being named Mrs. Bentley. Mrs. Bentley is mentioned only in passing. Great-Grandmother is Mrs. Parsons and replaces the character of Helen Loomis in the story “The Swan.” I’m pretty sure she was not named in the book and the book did not specify which grandparent she was the mother of which if I recall correctly the movie does.

Couple nitpicks: Colonel Freeleigh says the American Civil War was seventy years earlier. This would place the movie in 1931, very close to the book’s date of 1928. Great-Grandmother says her husband fought in the Civil War, which would explain the picture of the young Confederate soldier, but died in a war forty years earlier. The only war the United States was involved in anywhere around that time that I know of was the Spanish American War in 1898. Forty years would place the movie in 1938, ten years after the book takes place. Perhaps she really said thirty years and the translation got it wrong, or perhaps that is a mistake. Strange to say, when Great-Grandfather appears to escort Great-Grandmother to Heaven, he is a young man in a Civil War uniform, and Confederate at that though the family lives in Illinois. He is not the older gentleman in a Spanish American War uniform he would have been when he died, at which time he should have been over fifty. If this was explained I missed it. From the translation of Great-Grandmother’s final speech, much of the best part of the book speech is left out and my advice is to read the book.

John Huff’s style of dress would not be unusual in the late 1960s or 1970s but would have raised eyebrows in earlier decades. Charlie Woodman states that Douglas lost a penny in Madam Tarot’s machine, but the coin Douglas put in was clearly a quarter or some coin which looked just like one. In “Calling Mexico,” the cars in the Mexico street scene looked more late 1930s to 1940s to me but then I am no car expert. I am not up enough on fashion or other clues to say when the movie appeared to be set or whether there were anachronisms.

Objectionable content includes smoking and violence in Colonel Freeleigh’s flashbacks.

I am watching every adaptation of Bradbury’s work and in my opinion this is the best at capturing the true beauty and spirit of the original work.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,