The Little Screw, A Soviet Fantasy 1927 RU 1080p WEB-DL x264

Year: 1927
Country: Soviet Union
Director: Vladislav Tverdovskiy
IMBD: Link

Language : Russian





In January 1918, just three months after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the writer L. Kormchii (Leonard Piragis) published an article titled “A Forgotten Weapon” in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. “The bourgeoisie knew all too well the importance of children’s literature as a useful tool for strengthening its own dominance”, he argued. “We should not forget that the same tools, the same weapons can be used for the opposite goal.”

Nikolai Agnivtsev’s 1925 agitprop children’s book Vintik-Shpintik seems to heed Kormchii’s call. It opens on a factory filled with anthropomorphic machines, happily buzzing along in industrious harmony. The dialogue rings with the repetitive clang, whoosh, and clank of lathes, gears, and flywheels: "Вот-вот! Вот-вот! Вот!”, “Ух-ух! Ух-ух! Ух!”, “Эх-эх! Эх-эх! Эх!” Our protagonist is a “little screw” (vintik-shpintik: diminutive forms of the words for screw and spindle/rabbet), who happily participates in production, carrying out his “modest duty” (cкромный долг). One day, however, the machines are forced to choose a “delegate” to represent them. And suddenly the socialist machines resort to a more primitive way of thinking: “Я-то! Я-то! Я-то!” (That’s me! Me! Me!). Except our little screw remains silent. He patiently waits his turn. And when asked to be given the floor to make a speech, the bigger machines laugh him into silence. He doesn’t get angry, curse, or a shake a fist, we are told, he simply walks out — a one-screw strike. “He is no longer just the ‘little man’ tearfully celebrated in nineteenth-century liberal Russian literature. He is the former naught who has now felt some call to be all”, writes Evgeny Steiner, alluding to lyrics from the Russian “Internationale”. When the factory starts up again, something is wrong, and the machinic bullies realize their mistake: “Well, you just can’t live without him!” (Ну, никак не проживешь!). Embarrassed and shamefaced, they wheel themselves to his home and apologize. The book ends smugly, with the screw readying himself to return to work: “He said to them, half-turned: Ha, there you go!” (Им сказал в пол-оборота: Hy, вот, то-то!)

Illustrated by Vladimir Tvardosvsky, Vintik-Shpintik was very popular: the initial print run of 10,000 editions was followed by a 20,000 copy reissue in 1927. The same year as the book was reissued, Vladislav Tvardovsky directed an eleven-minute animated adaptation for the Leningrad Factory Sovkino, which hews close to Agnivtsev’s vision, and, according to Peter Bagrov, is the only extant “fully-fledged example” of the Leningrad school of animation. The film is slightly more emotional and comic than its source — an effect achieved, in part, thanks to the German score, which was added later, in 1931.


Born in Moscow, Nikolai Agnivtsev (1888–1932) was the son of a renowned lawyer who served the Judiciary of Russia. Returning from exile in Berlin after the Russian Civil War, Agnivtsev had difficulty adjusting to the new political climate — and its new expectations of literature — and pivoted from poetry to children’s books. Vintik-Shpintik was composed the same year that writer and editor Anna Grinberg described a “new” communist child reader in a 1925 issue of the Bolshevik government journal Press and Revolution: “When he is very young, he strokes a book with his little hand and says tenderly, ‘This little book’s about the U-S-S-R. I don’t know what the U-S-S-R is; I only know that it’s good.’” (Hunter Dukes)

[ About file ]

Name: The Little Screw, A Soviet Fantasy.Vladislav Tverdovskiy.1927.WEB-DL.mkv
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2022 11:49:56 +0100
Size: 172,980,133 bytes (164.96671 MiB)

[ Magic ]

File type: Matroska data
File type: EBML file, creator matroska

[ Generic infos ]

Duration: 00:11:12 (671.781 s)
Container: matroska
Total tracks: 2
Track nr. 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC) {und}
Track nr. 2: audio (A_OPUS) {eng}
Muxing library: Lavf57.71.100
Writing application: Lavf57.71.100

[ Relevant data ]

Resolution: 1440 x 1080
Width: multiple of 32
Height: multiple of 8
Average DRF: 27.206612
Standard deviation: 3.522261
Std. dev. weighted mean: 3.358937

[ Video track ]

Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Resolution: 1440 x 1080
Frame aspect ratio: 4:3 = 1.333333
Pixel aspect ratio: 1:1 = 1
Display aspect ratio: 4:3 = 1.333333
Framerate: 24 fps
Stream size: 160,559,047 bytes (153.121039 MiB)
Duration (bs): 00:11:12 (671.749989 s)
Bitrate (bs): 1912.128614 kbps
Qf: 0.051229

[ Audio track ]

Codec ID: A_OPUS
Sampling frequency: 48000 Hz
Channels: 2
Sample size: 32-bit

[ Video bitstream ]

Bitstream type: MPEG-4 Part 10
User data: x264 | core | 155 | r2901 | 7d0ff22
SPS id: 0
Profile: High@L4
Num ref frames: 3
Aspect ratio: Square pixels
Chroma format: YUV 4:2:0
PPS id: 0 (SPS: 0)
Entropy coding type: CABAC
Weighted prediction: P slices - explicit weighted prediction
Weighted bipred idc: B slices - implicit weighted prediction
8x8dct: Yes
Total frames: 16,122
Drop/delay frames: 0
Corrupt frames: 0

P-slices: 8089 ( 50.174 %) ##########
B-slices: 7842 ( 48.642 %) ##########
I-slices: 191 ( 1.185 %)
SP-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)
SI-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)

[ DRF analysis ]

average DRF: 27.206612
standard deviation: 3.522261
max DRF: 35

DRF<12: 0 ( 0.000 %)
DRF=12: 1 ( 0.006 %)
DRF=13: 3 ( 0.019 %)
DRF=14: 12 ( 0.074 %)
DRF=15: 3 ( 0.019 %)
DRF=16: 15 ( 0.093 %)
DRF=17: 25 ( 0.155 %)
DRF=18: 65 ( 0.403 %)
DRF=19: 149 ( 0.924 %)
DRF=20: 445 ( 2.760 %) #
DRF=21: 785 ( 4.869 %) #
DRF=22: 831 ( 5.154 %) #
DRF=23: 456 ( 2.828 %) #
DRF=24: 458 ( 2.841 %) #
DRF=25: 718 ( 4.454 %) #
DRF=26: 1189 ( 7.375 %) #
DRF=27: 2211 ( 13.714 %) ###
DRF=28: 2275 ( 14.111 %) ###
DRF=29: 3308 ( 20.519 %) ####
DRF=30: 1126 ( 6.984 %) #
DRF=31: 676 ( 4.193 %) #
DRF=32: 439 ( 2.723 %) #
DRF=33: 325 ( 2.016 %)
DRF=34: 399 ( 2.475 %)
DRF=35: 208 ( 1.290 %)
DRF>35: 0 ( 0.000 %)

P-slices average DRF: 26.327976
P-slices std. deviation: 3.139972
P-slices max DRF: 35

B-slices average DRF: 28.211553
B-slices std. deviation: 3.590987
B-slices max DRF: 35

I-slices average DRF: 23.157068
I-slices std. deviation: 3.104875
I-slices max DRF: 29

This report was created by AVInaptic (01-11-2020) on 31-10-2025 20:18:03