The magic raven Rumburak

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Movie
German title The magic raven Rumburak
Original title Rumburak
Country of production Czechoslovakia
original language Czech
Publishing year 1984
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Václav Vorlíček
script Václav Vorlíček
Miloš Macourek
music Angelo Michajlov
camera Emil Sirotek
cut Miroslav Hájek
occupation

The magic raven Rumburak (original title: Rumburak ) is a film for children and young people, which at times was also broadcast as a two-part series. The film was made in a co-production between Czechoslovak television and West German radio . Miloš Macourek wrote the script ; It was directed by Václav Vorlíček .

The film is based on the character Rumburak from the TV series The Fairytale Bride , but differs greatly in content.

action

The magician Rumburak assumes the form of a raven during the day, but that of a human at night. He leads a miserable existence; he is constantly cold and hungry. He lives on top of an old tower in the city of Prague and shares the accommodation with the jealous raven lady Ottilie, with whom he lives in a wild marriage, who is constantly bickering and literally picking at him. In addition, Rumburak is a magician without any power, because he has forgotten all magic formulas.

The only bright spot in his gloomy existence is the beautiful girl Helene. Every morning Rumburak flies to the ice rink to watch them train. Helene, the daughter of the school principal Trojan, trains hard every day for a career as a figure skater. She has taken the raven to her heart and only comes into top form under the eyes of her "mascot".

But even the flight to the ice rink is dangerous. Engineer Zacharias, a crazy technology fanatic and enemy of the animal world, prefers to shoot ravens with his rifle. One day, Rumburak's stomach growls again with hunger, a bullet hits him from Zacharias and he falls. Fortunately for him, he ends up right at the feet of Willy, the son of Director Trojan's and Helene's brother. He takes the raven Rumburak at home and looks after him.

Towards evening the raven turns back into Rumburak, although Director Trojan had ringed him beforehand. Rumburak takes this opportunity, ransack the Trojan's pantry and steals warm winter fur from the wardrobe. Back on the road, Rumburak is almost run over at a traffic light. To make amends, the driver gives him a job as a night watchman at the city research institute, where Zacharias and Helene also work. In this institute there is also a central computer, known by everyone as a nonsense head, which Rumburak uses that night to get back to old magic formulas. He is particularly interested in those with whom you can put yourself in the realm of fairy tales.

That night, however, he doesn't succeed, instead the nonsense head goes crazy and leaves mountains of papers with compound words. When Zacharias entered the computer room the next morning, together with the porter Pechanek, he found chaos. He thoughtlessly read out one of the formulas from the countless papers and Pechanek disappeared. Zacharias triumphantly makes a momentous decision, with this formula he could help human technology to the final victory over nature and he expands an important part of the computer so that it cannot betray it.

Zacharias is now starting his campaign against the animal world: He wanders through the city and sends cats , dogs , budgies and animals from the city zoo to the fairy tale kingdom, but is observed by Director Trojan. But Zacharias gets rid of the unwelcome witness by making Trojan disappear too. To cover up the matter, he shoves Director Trojan's bag into the lion's cage and everyone believes the animal rights activist has been eaten by the lion. Rumburak loses his job as a night watchman, but is invited to dinner by a friendly gentleman and learns of Trojan's fate. He has a plan. Since Aunt Eugenie, Trojan's sister, believes in transmigration of souls , during the day he pretends to be director Trojan, who has been reborn as a raven. In the evening, when he regains his human form, he appears at the Trojans house as the ornithologist Schubert, a friend of the director. Using a few tricks, Rumburak succeeds in deceiving those around him and actually convincing them that he is the director of Trojan.

Only Willy is suspicious and can finally convict Rumburak based on the ring his father has attached to him. So he can "blackmail" him; Rumburak has some teachers changed, organizes excursions during school hours and makes sure that Willy gets the school clerk's dog for his birthday. In the meantime, Helene has fallen in love with the ornithologist Schubert alias Rumburak.

But finally the whole fraud flies when Zacharias reveals to a friend that he was the one who made director Trojan and the many animals disappear. He is then forced to repair the central computer and bring Trojan back into the human kingdom by means of the magic formula recited backwards. The computer is out for revenge and is looking for a magic formula that will turn Zacharias into a raven.

Director Trojan returns home just as Rumburak is visiting again. He transports Rumburak back to the fairy tale kingdom and at the same time ensures that the disappeared animals reappear.

After violent protests from Helene and Willy, Trojan decides to bring Rumburak back into the human kingdom, and he succeeds in doing so using the magic formula. The king of the fairy tale kingdom had in the meantime pardoned Rumburak and hired him again as a second category wizard.

But Rumburak is not unhappy to be back in the human kingdom, since his love for Helene is more important to him than any title or magic. The transformed engineer Zacharias is taken in by raven lady Ottilie and makes it her new task to ensure the technical progress of the birds. Rumburak can fill the position in the research institute that has become vacant and thus always be at Helene's side.

Differences to The Fairy Tale Bride

The magic raven Rumburak has its origin in the television series The Fairy Tale Bride and is, so to speak, its sequel. However, the plot differs significantly from the series.

In the last episode of The Fairy Tale Bride , the magician Vigo managed to overcome Rumburak and his ally, the witch. As a punishment for their crimes, he turned them both into a washing machine and a refrigerator with the help of the wish ring. In The Magic Raven Rumburak not clearly spelled out, here Rumburak turned daytime into a raven, night receives its normal shape. It is only in The Return of the Fairy Tale Bride , the sequel to the fairy tale bride , that an attempt is made to resolve the contradiction and that the transformation into a refrigerator subsided when the guarantee year expired and that Rumburak regained his human form.

While a magical cloak was necessary in the fairy tale bride to switch from the human kingdom to the fairy tale kingdom, a simple spell is now sufficient.

Transformations also take place simply via a spell, in the fairy tale bride you still need a magic ring for this.

Episodes of the two-part series

  1. Life in the tower
  2. Abracadabra in the computer

Length: 50 minutes each.

Others

In The Magic Raven Rumburak , the author Miloš Macourek continued his criticism of human civilization, which is already discussed in The Fairy Tale Bride and other works. What is striking is the subtle form of criticism, which, without coming into conflict with the authorities of Czechoslovakia at the time, is also directed against the conditions in the socialist state ( environmental destruction , satellite towns, etc.). People's obedience to technology as well as their dealings with nature and in this case especially with the animal world are presented critically. Thus, the film The Magic Raven Rumburak brought entertainment as well as impulses to reflect on the relationship between humans and their environment.

In The Return of the Fairytale Bride there are only a few allusions to the film The Magic Raven Rumburak . For example, the witch speaks briefly of "the figure skater" who left Rumburak. In addition, Arabella is working with the animal-hating Zacharias on the araphon, which is supposed to enable humans to communicate with animals.

literature

The fairy tale bride / The magic raven ; by Miloš Macourek ISBN 3-8025-5034-X .

Web links