The Night Before Christmas

Noch pered Rozhdestvom

Russia

1913

41 Min

Black and White

Silent, Russian

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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SCR Wladyslaw Starewicz, Nikolai Gogol

CAST Ivan Mozzhukhin, Olga Obolenskaya, Lidiya Tridenskaya, Petr Lopukhin, Aleksandr Kheruvimov, Pavel Knorr

Synopsis

The plot is, on the whole, close to Gogol’s classic tale. The action is set in a Cossack stanitsa. On Christmas Eve, a minor demon arrives at the home of a local witch called Solokha. They both ride on the witch’s broom, after which the demon steals the Moon and hides in an old rag. In the ensuing darkness, some inebriated Cossacks can’t find their way to a shinok (tavern) and decide to go home. One by one, they each come to visit Soloha, who hides each one (starting from the demon) in bags so that none of them see each other.

At the same time, Solokha’s son Vakula the Metalsmith (P. Lopukhin), tries to woo the beauty Oksana (Olga Obolenskaya), but she laughs at him and demands that he find her the shoes which the Tsarina wears. Vakula goes to Soloha in sadness, but upon coming there sees the bags and decides to take them to the forge. Getting tired along the way, he leaves the heaviest bags on the street, which are picked up by a caroling company. Vakula, who is left only with the bag containing the demon, goes to Patsyuk, a sorcerer, to ask him how to find a demon – only with the help of a demon can he hope to get Tsarina’s shoes.

The Patsyuk answers that a person should not search for a demon if he has a demon behind his back. Vakula takes it as some kind of a murky wise say, but indeed eventually finds the demon in the bag and forces him to take him to St. Petersburg. There, Prince Potemkin takes him for an ambassador of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and gives him Tsarina’s shoes. The demon takes Vakula home and Vakula lets him go. Oksana agrees to marry Vakula. —Wikipedia

Director

Wladyslaw Starewicz

Wladyslaw Starewicz, a grand master of animation, was one of the directors of Lovno Museum of Natural History and graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He began making puppet films about 1911 (see ‘Mest finematograficheskogo operatou’), emigrated to France in 1920 and continued to develop there his technique for plastic animation with the help of his two daughters, Irene Starewicz and Nina Star, whose birth-name was Jeannie Starewicz. He, with the help of his daughters, in front of and behind the camera, employed articulated puppets constructed with an extraordinary precision, with features that could be altered at will (with stop-motion)to produce any desired expression, and dressed in costumes designed with great attention to detail. He filmed laboriously, frame by frame, and produced some of the most fantastic storybook characters and tales ever seen on the screen.

Although his name nowadays means very little except to animation buffs (and even they have to… read more

Wladyslaw Starewicz, a grand master of animation, was one of the directors of Lovno Museum of Natural History and graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He began making puppet films about 1911 (see ‘Mest finematograficheskogo operatou’), emigrated to France in 1920 and continued to develop there his technique for plastic animation with the help of his two daughters, Irene Starewicz and Nina Star, whose birth-name was Jeannie Starewicz. He, with the help of his daughters, in front of and behind the camera, employed articulated puppets constructed with an extraordinary precision, with features that could be altered at will (with stop-motion)to produce any desired expression, and dressed in costumes designed with great attention to detail. He filmed laboriously, frame by frame, and produced some of the most fantastic storybook characters and tales ever seen on the screen.

Although his name nowadays means very little except to animation buffs (and even they have to be pretty well informed), Wladyslaw Starewicz ranks alongside Walt Disney, as one of the great animation pioneers, and his career started nearly a decade before Disney’s. He became an animator by accident – fascinated by insects, he bought a camera and attempted to film them, but they kept dying under the hot lights. Stop-motion animation provided an instant (if slow) solution, and Starewicz discovered that he had a natural talent for it. He subsequently made dozens of short films, mostly featuring his trademark stop-motion puppets, but also live action films (some blending live action and animation), moving to France after the Russian Revolution to continue his career. His longest and most ambitious film was the feature-length ‘Tale of the Fox’, which took ten years to plan and eighteen months to shoot. Starewicz’ films were virtually one-man shows (writer/director/cameraman/designer/animator), though other important contributions (in front of and behind the camera) were made by his daughters. —IMDb

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