Ask someone who’s over 30, okay over 40, about “Peter and the Wolf” and most will have childhood memories of either the story or the music — or both. Ask someone under 40 and most likely he would have a much harder time trying to recall it, if he knows it at all.

A personal recollection of “Peter and the Wolf” is from one rather worn 45-speed phonograph recording that included both the narration and the delightful music of Sergie Prokofiev. But a more intense and vivid recollection is from the legendary Leonard Bernstein’s Young Peoples Concerts, broadcast every Sunday evening in the 1950s and ’60s. “Peter” was used by Bernstein in one episode, as it was intended by Prokofiev, as an instructional tool to help children learn and identify the sound of the different instruments of the orchestra, and to listen to the story the music was conveying.

Bernstein took great pains to dissect and explain the many facets of the music as he sat at a piano playing the music himself, or directing the orchestra in excerpts and phrases. Each character in the story has an instrument assigned to it along with a particular musical theme: the bird is represented by the flute; the duck, the oboe; the cat, the clarinet; the grandfather, bassoon; wolf, three French horns; the hunters, timpani and bass drum; and Peter the stringed instruments with the lightest and most delightful musical theme of all the characters.

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Prokofiev set the story in a meadow near Peter’s house. Peter (the little-boy hero), the bird, duck, and cat — musically comprised of the flute, oboe, clarinet, and violin — are out in the meadow playing together when Peter’s grandfather, announced by the bassoon, comes along and ushers him back home to safety, warning him that wolves are coming out of the forest into the meadow. When a hungry wolf, heralded by the proud French horns, comes along right after Peter gets behind the garden gate, the animals scramble for safety. The cat and bird both escape to the branches of a tree, while the duck, who doesn’t fly in the story, cannot run fast enough and is swallowed whole by the wolf.

Peter watches all this through the garden gate, and in a fit of bravery and concern for the duck, gathers up a rope and jumps from the garden wall to a tree branch from where he lasso’s the wolf’s tail with the help of the bird. Just then the hunters come out of the woods to the blustery, almost military sound of the drums, having followed the wolf’s trail. Peter convinces them not to shoot the wolf, as he has already captured it, and the whole entourage of Peter, grandfather, the hunters leading the wolf, and the cat triumphantly head toward the zoo. Amusingly enough, if you listen intently, you can hear the duck quacking (oboe playing softly) inside the wolf’s stomach.

The original story ends there, so no one ever really knows whether they get the duck out of the wolf’s stomach. But nonetheless, the wolf will harm the people and their livestock no more and the meadow is again safe for the animals and Peter. And Peter is much braver than he thought he could be, spurred on by the injustice of his pet duck being swallowed by the obvious animal menace of the time, a wolf.

Yes, “Peter and the Wolf” is a beloved classic musical tale, and is considered sacrosanct by many including myself. So, imagine my surprise when I viewed the new “interpretation” of the enduring piece on PBS’ “Great Performances,” settled in as I was directly after dinner, on my soft couch covered in a nice, soft afghan, soon to be joined by my spouse to sit in his customary spot in the corner recliner, in eager anticipation of a childhood favorite. Ah, the warm, cozy expectation of it all.

In my heart of hearts, I should have known that things would likely be different in 2008, and should not necessarily have expected to relive the childhood version that still plays in my head. I was so caught up in the euphoria of seeing and hearing the great classic again, that I must have ignored the warning signs — stop-animation puppetry of which I am not a big fan, and that fact that it was advertised as a new interpretation. Within the first three minutes I struggled to settle in and relax, but just could not. My consternation and then horror grew, and I found myself no longer reclining on the couch, but sitting up straight on the edge of the couch watching the approaching train wreck with eyes popping and blood pressure rising. I won’t even relate the comments emanating from the occupant of the corner recliner.

The new production was awful in my estimation; it was dark and dreary, weird and scary, and because the story line was changed and the setting so very different and the characters’ emotions rather twisted, the beloved music no longer told the story. A great imbalance occurred, with the music being somewhat lost to the strong images that took over.

Dark and Dreary Deportment

In the new adaptation, described as a “darkly comic modernization” on the PBS website, the story is set in a contemporary industrial wasteland of 1930s rural Russia. (I am not sure Russia had rural industrial wastelands at that time, but the producer says they wanted the story “based in reality” so it must be true.) It is not told by narration and there’s no dialogue by the characters either; everything is gleaned from the facial expressions of the stop-animated puppets.

Peter is no longer the lighthearted and forgetful boy who leaves the garden gate open to go play in a meadow as the music tells us. In this version he seems to be an angry and oppressed child with cold eyes who deliberately disobeys his perpetually grumpy grandfather — portrayed as overly protective and mean without reason, unless one knows the story in advance — with whom he shares a ramshackle abode. Anger and crabbiness might be understandable one supposes, given their apparently deprived life and very ugly surroundings — the grim realities of life in Russia.

Peter’s pet duck is the only loving character and doesn’t live all that long. The fat cat is sly, trying to catch the bird, but humorous at times, and the bird just plain silly. The bird has an injured wing, and Peter attaches a balloon, which he unexpectedly received from a Cossack-looking street vendor in town, to the bird via a string tied around the bird’s middle to help him fly. So far things are just a bit weird, but nothing untoward.

But here come the hunters; Peter meets them in town on (what else?) a potato procurement venture. Dressed in full combat gear, the hunters have been reinvented as camo-clothed, gun-toting, trigger-happy, mean, cruel street bullies, who three times during the film handle their guns unsafely and with disregard for others. Their lust for shooting and apparently death oozes out of them, as they are never seen without their guns and their intimidating attitudes.

One day, after sneaking out of the locked compound, Peter, the duck, and the bird play together on the frozen pond. The hungry and scraggily wolf makes her entrance, and after several tries, swallows the duck. Peter fetches a rope and a net from a shed, and from a branch of a tree manages to snag the wolf’s tail in a noose, dropping a net over the wolf. This is all fairly close to the original, with only some license taken, except, again, for the darkness and dreariness, weirdness and scariness.

But it’s the end that’s a bit of a jaw-dropper. Grandfather makes it on the scene in time to see Peter capture the wolf. But Peter takes this moment to stand up to his grandfather, apparently for past wrongs, and grabs the gun that is aimed at the wolf out of grandfather’s hands, so the wolf is spared. Oddly, grandfather trailers the wolf now in a cage into town with the seeming intention of selling it for the pelt. Peter has other ideas, however, and after showing the wolf to the children in the village — his moment in the sun — he opens the cage and lets the wolf go. Predictably, at the edge of town the wolf turns to look back in a gesture of thankfulness, and then trots on out of town under the light of the silvery moon.

Modern Propriety

The particular setting chosen for the film, and the emotions the filmmakers managed to draw from their own puppet creations, significantly impacted the tone and message of the whole project.

In this adaptation of “Peter and the Wolf,” the gun-wielding thugs/hunters are definitely the bad guys; they are no longer the dignified hunters in Prokofiev’s original who would save the day by protecting their families and livestock by killing the predatory and dangerous wolves. The message equating gun users with evil and irresponsibility, unrestrained behavior and hate is clear. Portrayed as it is in the film, it would easily implant a dislike or fear of guns and those who use them in young children.

Peter’s bravery is no longer apparent because his steely and cold eyes depict him as a defiant, sneaky, and independent child waiting to be caught breaking the rules. At the capture of the wolf, there still is little or no triumph showing in his face, so the moral message is lost as well.

Different explanations exist for the last turn of events when the wolf is released, one being that Peter took pity on the wolf because he himself didn’t like being imprisoned for his own safety by his grandfather. Another explanation is that some “connection” about freedom was made between Peter and the wolf, even though the wolf ate the only pet and source of love he had. But none of this is clear. More obvious is the endemic politically correct treatment of most subjects today, particularly in the entertainment industry — a combination of “turning the other cheek,” and “animals are endangered, and are put on Earth to roam the planet, and we must let them live in their proper environment.”

What was left was a politically correct film that carries anti-gun, anti-parental authority, and pro-wolf/wild animal messages. Even the musical score couldn’t save it.

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