Rêve de Noël

This award winning Czech film is included in a collection of mostly godawful short films entitled "Vintage Christmas Classics" and it's now on Freevee. It's the first movie in this collection I've seen which has any merit, as the others are just cheap and pointless...and will bring out the Grinch in anyone!

The film was dubbed into English. A girl comes to see all sorts of toys under the tree on Christmas and she tosses her old carrot-like doll to the ground. However, later it comes to life (through stop-motion) and entertains the little girl.

While this short isn't all that great, compared to the other films in the set, it's practically an Oscar-winner. The stop-motion quality isn't bad and the story kept my attention. The voice for the doll was pretty annoying (hence my score of 3 instead of 4), however and the film is pretty strange and most likely would NOT appeal to normal kids.

. . . this picture in the Civilized World have watched it under the title of A CHRISTMAS DREAM, on a DVD called 28 Christmas Cartoons. However, A CHRISTMAS DREAM is neither a dream nor an animated short. It is an irrational nightmare for any modern populace with a sense of logical thought, featuring low-quality live-action sequences interspersed with crude attempts at a puppet show. American law requires all purchasers of 28 Christmas Cartoons to get ten times their money back for egregious violations of the Truth in Advertising Act. So if you paid a quarter for this falsely billed refuse at a neighborhood yard sale, you should march right down to the clueless miscreant who filched your two bits and forcibly demand the $2.50 refund to which you're entitled.

Czechoslovak animator Karel Zeman made his directorial debut with "Vánoční sen" ("A Christmas Dream" in English), which he co-directed with his brother Bořivoj. The version that I saw had dialogue and scenes of Santa Claus, and I understand the original Czech version had neither.* The movie itself has kind of a bland plot, as a girl dreams that her rag doll comes to life and puts on a show. The stop motion animation is impressive, but that's really the only reason to watch this. Nonetheless, I do hope to see more of Karel Zeman's work.

*Similarly, the original Japanese release of "Godzilla" didn't feature Raymond Burr's character.