The Hobbit (1985 film)


The Hobbit is a 1985 Soviet television play, being a loose adaption of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 book The Hobbit by Vladimir Latyshev.
The play featured Zinovy Gerdt as "the professor", Mikhail Danilov as Bilbo Baggins, Anatoly Ravikovich as Thorin Oakenshield and Igor Dmitriev as Gollum. Smaug and the Mirkwood spiders were portrayed by puppets. Missing in this version are the trolls, Elrond, Beorn and the wood-elves. The goblins are human-like with little makeup, and were portrayed by dancers from the Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, as are the inhabitants of Lake Town.
The play was shot in 1984 as a teleplay and produced in the framework of the children's TV series Tale after Tale aired at the Leningrad TV Channel in the 1980s and the 1990s. It has also appeared on DVD, although both the TV and the DVD version contain some material that the other one doesn't.
No subtitles were included, but fan made subtitles have since appeared.

Cast

The film exists in at least two official versions, in each of which there are episodes that fall only in this version. Timing of versions differs by 50 seconds.