Housekeeper and overseer Freken Bock is familiar to Soviet children from Astrid Lindgren's story "The Kid and Carlson". But that slightly angular, ugly, plump woman depicted by the artists in the cartoon is very far from the real Freken Bock, invented and described by a writer from Sweden in her book.
Lindgren's fairy tale is a trilogy called Three Tales of Little Boy and Carlson. All three books have been translated into Russian and published in the USSR. However, not all of the books were filmed as cartoons.
The first Russian cartoon "Kid and Carlson", presented by the artist and director Boris Stepantsov, gained incredible popularity thanks to the first use of electrography in film making. On television, the Soviet viewer saw the cartoon in 1968. Two years later, the second part of the story "Carlson is Back" was filmed. But the third part of the cartoon is not destined to be filmed yet, tk. negotiations on this between "Soyuzmultfilm" and the heirs of Astrid Lindgren to this day have not been crowned with success.
It should be noted that the cartoon was filmed only based on the work, so some of the characters were modified and did not at all correspond to the original idea of the writer. Freken Bok is just such a character.
What is Freken Bock presented in the cartoon?
A red-haired, large woman with a very low voice and a harsh character. The drawn heroine does not take off her apron and keeps everything under her vigilant control.
She is not just a housekeeper, but a real housekeeper, as Carlson called her in the film. But this is just a servant without age and taste, looking after the Kid and the kitchen. But with her approach to any household chores, she imperiously dominates the members of the Kid's family.
By the way, Freken is by no means her personal name, as many mistakenly think. In Swedish, freken means the same as fraulein in Germany or mademoiselle in France. That is, this prefix is used to indicate that the woman is not married.
Which Freken Bock is in the book?
In Lindgren's text, Freken Bock is much softer and more attentive to the Kid. She is a childless widow who specializes in parenting and childcare.
In the trilogy of the writer, the Kid is rather spoiled, very much loved by mom and dad, as well as best friends. In the cartoon, he was portrayed as a lonely and deprived of the attention of his parents. According to the book, Malysh's mother herself runs the household, does not work, and Freken Bok is hired only to look after the child for the period of her departure for treatment. In the film, the parent is depicted in the image of a hunted Soviet woman who is forced to go to work for the whole day. This is how the Kid becomes the loneliest cartoon boy in the world.
It is noteworthy that in the original work, Freken Bok does not and never had a pet, while the cat Matilda appears in the film adaptation, who did not really like the naughty Carlson. If you read the book captiously, you can find a few more passages that differ from animation for television.
True story
There is another housekeeper, very vividly portrayed in the one-man show by Ekaterina Durova. It was staged based on the play by Oleg Mikhailov in 2016. The production is called The True Story of Freken Bock. Critics praised the idea. In general, the technique of giving the main roles in the play to the background characters taken from the classics is not new, but very useful. And often it develops into real dramatic masterpieces.
The play was shown at the Theater on st. Malaya Bronnaya. Freken Bok appeared in it as genuine, real and very reliable - exactly as the writer Lindgren described her. In this performance, she became the main character, which was performed by the actress Ekaterina Durova.
In fact, the assistant in the apartment of the Swanteson family is a small episode in the long life of the heroine of the book, Freken Hildur Bock. Her profession is working with "special" children, such as the youngest child in the Kid family, fantasizing about friendship with a flying man.
Freken was already in old age, her husband Julius died, and she did not have time to have her offspring. So she lives alone among antiques, more like trash. Her room resembles a radio studio (this is what her late husband wanted).
In fact, from beginning to end, the literary character is an invention of a Swedish writer, a fantasy. However, this performance is an interesting experiment, a kind of confession of an insanely lonely and rather lively woman about the days gone by. From it it becomes clear why the "housemaker" of the Kid loves buns, like a madwoman, calls to the soul in the bathroom and hates ghosts. Freken Boek is depicted as a kind, sweet, caring eccentric who believes in a dream and, like Carlson, is also not averse to playing a little naughty.