Une nuit sur le mont chauve

I've always enjoyed the music of Mussorgsky. This is a challenging piece. If only the quality of the print were better. Some of the more significant events were badly muted by age. Not too many years later, Disney approached the same piece and made it more slick. I didn't know this little film even existed.

Lyrical, dark, exceptionally interesting animated film. Occasionally charmingly inarticulate but some very special images here. Inspiring work from an early woman director. Saw it last night as part of the Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941 series playing here in Austin. See it if you get a chance.

About a year ago, I saw a short film from Canada called Le PAYSAGISTE. It was made completely by the pinscreen process where little pinholes were painstakingly made in fabric in order to create an animated picture. I was mesmerized by this film from 1976 and no idea that the film maker had actually NOT created the process and that Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker had perfected the process over 40 years earlier with UNE NUIT SUR LE MONT CHAUVE.

Both films are quite lovely to look at but aren't exactly the style of animation that most people would love. It's extremely artistic but not commercially entertaining to the average audience. In an art museum it would play well, but for a group of kids or average theater goers, it's unlikely they'd enjoy the rather artsy style. I liked it quite a bit, though I admit it isn't something I'd like to see every day.

Like the other reviewers, I caught this late at night, sat there stunned and mesmerized, and I've since tried to get my hands on it. It's the kind of thing the motion picture camera was invented for, but to go into detail would be pointless. Find it, somehow, and watch it.

Une nuit sur le mont chauve (1933)

**** (out of 4)

Also known as A NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN, this pinscreen short from Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff is so wonderful and so ground-breaking that their names deserve to be remembered right up there with Walt Disney. If you think that's too much praise then I'm going to guess that you haven't seen this film. It took eighteen months to complete and you can tell that by the images on the screen.

Pinscreen animation is the use of a screen with moveable pins. Just the thought of making animation like this boggles my mind but UNE NUIT SUR LE MONT CHAUVE does a masterful job of it and it's really hard to believe that this here was made in 1933. It's amazing how wonderful the images look and in fact you could argue that they're much better than a lot of what we see today. The earlier portion of the film deals with a lot of dark subjects and it's perfectly put to the music of Mussorgsky. As great as that looks, I was even more impressed with the later part of the film where there are a lot more whites used. Just check out the sequence with the white horse.