This is the second of the four animations which Yuri Norstein made as sole director. It's also probably my least favourite. To my eyes it's less visually inventive and slower paced than his earlier 'Fox and Hare', lacks the sheer enchantment of 'Hedgehog in the Fog', or plain genius of 'Tale of Tales' - but I've just compared it with two of the greatest and most famous pieces of animation ever made, so this is by no means a negative review, and it should be no surprise that it still rates so well.

If there is a problem here it's that the story is so utterly simple, that all the weight falls on the way it's told visually, and whereas a masterwork could have carried it off, I don't quite put 'Heron and Crane' in that class.

The story, derived as usual from Russian folk tale, is just this. A male Crane and a female Heron live nearby each other, and would like to be together, but their efforts at courtship are eternally frustrated by their own egos and their sense that ultimately they're too good for the other. That's it. Crane woos Heron, she rejects him. He gets in a huff. She changes her mind and accepts. His pride is wounded and he tells her he wouldn't have her now anyway, and so it goes, with no resolution.

You have a short film with no climax. No real middle or beginning either. It's as if this has been going on forever. Now for sure there's a moral there, but as I said, the plot isn't much to hang a film on. In fact it's hard to see how something so devoid of momentum could be anything but a failure. It's a testament to Yuri Norstein's unique visual and directorial style that it's still actually a worthwhile film. Dismiss it is I may, its unique visual style and atmosphere returns to gaunt me.

Unlike the films either side of 'Heron and Crane', the tones are washed out and muted, told primarily in bluey-greens and dark greys against a whitish, overexposed looking background. The setting across which Heron and Crane chase each other, or chase each other away, is atmospheric and strange, almost unsettling. There are tumbled, ancient pillars, overgrown vegetation, abandoned pagodas, evidence of some vanished human civilization. Heron's house has a bench which looks ancient and has one leg completely broken off so that it's collapsed almost uselessly in the middle of her 'living room'. The multiplane camera is put to good use to show us the murky landscape through layers of mist.

I don't really know what all of this means, or what, if anything it has to do with the story or its moral. Perhaps the sense of ancient decay in the setting is a clever visual balance to the sense of repetitive futility of the character's behaviour. Ultimately though, it's like everything else Norstein has done - visually and emotionally unique and unforgettable. Love it or hate it, there's not another piece of animation that it resembles. It will stick in your head forever with its mouldering, collapsed, overgrown collonades. There are a couple of moments too, an expression on Heron's face of sheer forlorness when Crane spurns her one time, that is hauntingly hard to get out of my mind.

Still a remarkable little film, even if it falls a little short of the greatness of his best works. But be warned, it will grow on you....and grow....