20 Years of Toil, 20 Minutes of Unique Film

"Francesca participates in the movies as much as Norstein," Bossart says. "The two of them are one artist. He couldn't exist without her."

Norstein and Yarbusova collaborated on the children's film "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "Tale of Tales," an associative dreamland where Picassoesque bulls jump rope and baby wolves rock babies. Lamplight -- shining onto the street through doors and windows as if in a vision -- figures prominently.

Despite its simple beauty, "Tale" was not made with children in mind. In the sequence imagining the huge losses Russia experienced in World War II, couples dance to the famous tango "Weary Sun." Every time the old record skips, one man disappears from the frame and then the women dance alone.

Norstein says "Tale of Tales" is a film about the way memory is conjured up. He says the role of the artist is to allow people to "experience life yet unlived. This is the most significant thing we can get from art."

Fans like to watch the film again and again. "I have seen it many times," says Yulia Zotova, 42, who attended the exhibit of Norstein's work in Moscow. " 'Tale of Tales' evokes these emotions in me. I've always been fascinated with the character Little Wolf because he's a symbol of wisdom and love. My impression is that spiritually we are searching for this wisdom and this love and we find it in his films."

In the last quarter of a century, the film has inspired filmmakers, animators and writers. In June 2002, the Zagreb International Animation Festival published the results of a poll of animators to establish the best animated film of all time. It was "Tale of Tales." A 1984 poll of animators came up with same result.

When "Tale of Tales" first appeared in 1979, Soviet censors found the film too mysterious for their liking, and it was banned for a while. Norstein says he holds no real grudges against the censors, and he prefers to rail against what he sees as the crass impulses of today's movie industry.

"There is no artistic freedom because artistry has been replaced by ignorance," he says.

Norstein says he cannot watch computer-generated animation; it makes him sick.

Following him into his film studio is a trip back in time. Piles of silver reel-to-reel canisters, tall as a man, rest behind the editing table. Norstein demonstrates his technique by shining an office lamp's light through charcoal-colored cutouts of St. Petersburg buildings.

"I'll never use a computer," he says proudly.

The room seems arrested in time, as if it, too, awaits the resumption of "Overcoat."

When will "Overcoat" be finished?

"This 'Overcoat' film began at the most inappropriate time of perestroika," Norstein says, referring to the period before the breakup of the Soviet Union, when money for artists dried up. "I always had difficulty with my bosses doing it on time and the removal of fees. But I never gave up on the film."

The plot: Akikiy Akakievitch, a clerk scorned by his colleagues, spends much of Gogol's story trying to acquire a new overcoat. He succeeds, but after a night out with his fellow office workers, he is attacked and his new coat is stolen. He falls ill with fever. After his death, an apparition haunts the city, forcing rich and poor alike to give him their overcoats.

"Maybe it's because it's Gogol," Norstein says, chuckling at the knowledge that the writer went mad. In any case: "Psychologically, 'Overcoat' is a very difficult film."