La nuit de Noël

If you combine Starewicz's cinematic creativity with Gogol's literary imagination, you know that you are going to get something interesting. This filming of "Christmas Eve" is filled with manic activity, offbeat characters, and amusing developments. It was quite an ambitious undertaking for 1913, and it is also a live-action feature, rather than one of the animated gems for which Starewicz is probably better-remembered. But the material provides opportunities for both comedy and fantasy, giving Starewicz plenty to work with.

The story takes place in a small village, with a popular witch, the devil, a smith, a Cossack's daughter, and several others getting involved in a long series of escapades. In Gogol's original story, everything ties together more neatly, and it's all inter-related. This film version never quite pulls everything together (whether because it assumed familiarity with the story, or whether it just proved a little too difficult without spoken dialogue). But most of the sequences hold up well enough by themselves anyway, since they usually have enough humor to carry them off even when is not as clear how they connect with the main story.

Whether or not you are familiar with the original story, there's quite a bit to see. It's crazy stuff that's fun to watch.

Wladyslaw Starewicz (Ladislas Starewitch in France) was a genius of early stop-motion puppet animation. His humorous tales involving toys, replicas of insects, frogs and such remain delightful to this day; "The Cameraman's Revenge" is especially amazing for 1912. This, "Christmas Eve", is a live-action film, though. There is some animation and mild special effects. It's amusing in parts, but, overall, it's unremarkable.

The camera-work and film-making are mostly straightforward: a stationary camera without much scene dissection or close shots. Scenes become rather dull as a result. The exceptions are two brief forward, shaking camera movements involving the devil flying. That's innovative film-making; if only he'd built upon it, this film might have went somewhere. It reminds one of the startling camera movements he accomplished in "The Mascot" (1934), which also involved a devil.

Additionally, Ivan Mozzhukhin (Ivan Mosjoukine in France), a star in his day and unrecognizable in the costume, seems to relish his role as the devil. The Gogol story of connected stories is promising material, but this adaptation doesn't appear to be on the right scale for Starewicz. As a film made in 1913, it's okay and has its moments; however, as a film by Starewicz, it's unsatisfactory. "The Cameraman's Revenge" is nearly unbelievable as a film made in the early 1910s; "Christmas Eve", however, is clearly such.

This, unusually, is a live action feature from stop-motion pioneer Wladyslaw Starewicz. It still incorporates some fantasy elements, however. In fact those parts are certainly the best moments in this feature. When it veers away from the fantastic and concentrates more on the comedy it becomes a little mundane. The strongest imagery involves the character of the devil. He is a hairy bear-like creature with a creepy face. An excellent monster. All scenes involving him are good and the ones to watch this for. He even takes to the air and travels through the night sky on a broomstick, which is a great image. On the whole though, this film suggests that Starewicz was much better with animation. His strange, wholly original features, such as Cameraman's Revenge are what he will always be remembered for. This is more uneven, although it does have great parts as I have said.

Bizarre silent Russian movie which takes forever to get to the point of its tale, but does at least look impressive. Many men end up in sacks for some reason.

I had never heard of Nikolai Gogol's work "Christmas Eve" before watching Wladyslaw Starewicz's "Noch pered Rozhdestvom" (translated both as "Christmas Eve" and "The Night Before Christmas"). Starewicz's only live-action work is nice, brief entertainment, as a series of wacky things take place in a Ukrainian village on December 24: a demon and a witch make mischief, some Cossacks get drunk, and a smith woos a hot young woman.

Starewicz's shorts - most of them consisting of stop-motion animation - are the only examples of pre-revolutionary Russian cinema that I've seen. If there's more I'd love to see it. In the meantime, this short is nothing special, but OK. I guess that Starewicz was more comfortable with animation. Certainly entertaining, at the least.