Silent Film of the Month: The Night Before Christmas (1913)

Run Time: 41 minutes. Director: Ladislas Starevich. Writer: Ladislas Starevich.  Main Cast: Ivan Mosjoukine, Olga Obolenskaya, Lidiya Tridenskaya. Cinematographer: Ladislas Starevich.



Ladislas Starevich is one of the greatest pioneers of stop motion animation, and one of the most important animation directors to come out of Russia. He was also one of the first film makers to prove that animation could be art, and he was a co-director, co-writer, cinematographer, art director and animator on the first feature to be done completely in stop motion animation, The Story of the Fox (Which by the way is a masterpiece). He also directed many of the best stop motion animated short films of all time, such as The Cameraman's Revenge, The Frogs Who Wanted a King, The Mascot, and The Insects Christmas. What is interesting about The Night Before Christmas though is that it is one of the director's very few forays into live action film.

This film is not based off the famous poem by Clement Clark Moore. Instead it is based off a short story by Nikolai Gogol. In this story a blacksmith wishes to obtain the empresses' slippers. To gain these slippers the blacksmith sets out to capture the devil himself to help him. I have written about another movie based on this story on this blog (to read that click here).
The Night Before Christmas is a very charming movie. The humor is spot on the acting is quite good, and the whole film has a unique charm to it. However this film at a mere 41 minutes (two minutes less and it would have been a short instead of a feature) feels like it should have been longer to flesh out the characters, and story more.

The effects are not only very impressive for being over 100 years old, but they also hold up quite well today. However for some modern movie goers they still might take some getting used to. While much of today's cinema focuses on making the effects look as realistic as possible, this film has a stylized look and the effects follow suit, This effects don't always look realistic, not because this is an old movie, but because, they were never meant to. This movie is a fairy tale for adults and the effects are meant to heighten the fantasy aspects. When you keep this in mind, there is no doubt that these effects are extremely impressive and very pleasing to the eyes. Starevich even fits in some of his signature stop motion animation here, and it is just as good as you except from him.


This is a very good movie that despite not being quite up to the standard of Starevich's animated work is still well worth watching.

The critics of the time praised this film, some calling it one of the great works of the Russian cinema.

For anyone interested this film can be found on YouTube.


-Michael J. Ruhand