In the thirteen-minute animated film Two Little Frosts (Dva Mrazici, 1953), two ghostly frost sprites make a bet with one another as to which can bite hardest. This color fantasy is full drawn-animation sprites interacting with stop-motion puppets.
The carrot-nosed frost sprite settles unseen on a rich man driving his sled through the snow. With a finger the sprite puts out the man's pipe & makes him fall asleep, then grabs his nose & freezes it, & gives him a big hug around the head.
The larger sprite meanwhile has grabbed the nose of a happy-seeming peasant, but he just fans the air to brush the sprite's hand away, & rubs his nose to keep it warm. Grabbing the peasant by both ears, the fellow just puts his hands over his ears. Seating himself in the peasant's lap, the peasant jumps off his sled & jogs alongside to keep warm.
The peasant is warm from chopping down a tree for firewood, sweating even though the sprite leaps on his back. He even has to take off his jacket to cool off. Several more incidents frustrate the larger frost sprite before the peasant heads off home with a sled of firewood.
Meanwhile the wealthy man's nose has turned completely white, frozen solid while he slumbers in the seat of the sled, & the smaller frost sprite has taken up residence inside the man's jacket. That night the sprite is outside the rich man's home gazing in at the frosted window, watching him sneezing with a bad cold.
Happily the sprite skates around in the moonlight on the snow. But when his friend shows up to compare notes, the bigger sprite is is downcast from his failure.
A Slovakian fairy tale originating among peasants, the meaning is fairly obvious, in that the industrious are warm even if poor, the rich are as sick as they are wealthy.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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