The Post (Почта) is a long children's poem by Samuil Marshak and one of his best-known works. The premise is simple: a string of postmen in different countries try to deliver a letter to Boris Zhitkov, an enthusiastic traveler, eventually catching up with him after he's back home in Leningrad.
It has been adapted to the screen by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky twice — in 1929 in black-and-white and in 1964, in collaboration with Vera Tsekhanovskaya, in color. The 1929 version was remade with sound in 1930 and later colorized by hand, however, both these reworkings have been lost.
Not related to The Post, a Steven Spielberg film.
Tropes featured in the poem:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: The Russian word for "autobus" has an accent on the second syllable. While describing London, Marshak deliberately stresses the third one, as an allusion to the English "bus".
- Adapted Out: After World War II, there were some editions of the poem that cut Zhitkov's sojourn in Berlin. But it didn't stick for too long, since the 1964 cartoon already shows it again.
- Artistic License – Geography: The poem features a nonexistent Bobkin Street in London.
- Book Ends: The poem begins and ends with a postman arriving at the door of Zhitkov's apartment in Leningrad with the letter.
- Germanic Efficiency: The German postman has his trousers "ironed according to the rules of science".
- Real-Person Fic: Boris Zhitkov is a real person and a well-known writer as well.
- Unstoppable Mailman: It takes several mailmen in four countries, but the letter reaches its recipient.
Tropes specific to the adaptations:
- Actionized Adaptation: The ship carrying Boris to Brazil gets caught in a storm and sinks, forcing Boris and his dog to swim to the shore. None of this happens in the poem.
- Adaptation Name Change: The 1929 version changes Boris's last name from Zhitkov to Prutkov, probably because the real Boris Zhitkov was still alive and well at that point.
- Anachronism Stew: In the 1964 version, the recipient is once again Boris Zhitkov — who died in 1943... but the plot is clearly set in 1964, with the Soviet postmarks depicting man's first spaceflight and the English ones Elizabeth II, and the plane Zhitkov boards being clearly a 1960s turboprop rather than a pre-World War II monoplane.
- Canon Foreigner: Boris owns a loyal poodle, which wasn't mentioned in the poem.
- Character Exaggeration: In the poem, the Unstoppable Mailman postmen are simply doing the job very efficiently. In the movies, the postman delivering mail from England to Brazil takes care to rescue the postal bags from a sinking ship.
- Dramatic Irony: After the English postman learns that Boris has left for Brazil, the letter is urgently forwarded there, and, unbeknownst to the involved parties, is put on the same ship Boris himself is taking.
- Missed Him by That Much: In the poem, Zhitkov leaves for Berlin the day before the letter was to reach him in Leningrad in the beginning. In the adaptations, the postman misses him by mere seconds.
