The Nightingale's Voice (1923)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Having fled revolutionary Russia, Władysław Starewicz moved to France, where he continued making cartoons. Most of them are surreal, but "La voix du rossignol" ("The Voice of the Nightingale" in English) is almost mystifying. It depicts a girl who catches a nightingale, but has a dream reminding her that birds are not toys.The short is tinted to make it look as if it's in color. The tint might look silly to any person who's used to movies getting filmed in color, but you have to realize that cinema was still a relatively new thing at this time, and they were still trying to figure out how to do things.Anyway, it's an OK short.The bird's life as a troubadour. A troubadour who got killed before he reached Bombay, is it? (props to the Rolling Stones)

From the 1910s until the late 1950s, Wladyslaw Starewicz made a bunch of cute little stop-motion films. Aside from being one of the early pioneers in the craft, he had a fanciful knack of looking at common objects like toys and dead bugs and imagining them in their own little world. Animating them, he made some amazingly cool films that are still very, very watchable today."La Voix du Rossignol" is a bit different from the other Starewicz films in that it is more like a fairy tale or a Just-So story. And, interestingly, the entire film is hand-colored--which must have taken a VERY long time to do.The story begins with a nightingale accidentally breaking a child's doll and falling into a trap. The girl decides to keep the bird as her pet. And, each night, the bird causes the girl to have some amazingly fanciful dreams--such as one involving bugs and little fairies. In addition, the bird induces a dream about the life of this nightingale--and learns that it's sad because it lost its partner. The child is touched to see such strong feelings in a bird and decides to let it go. The bird, in thanks, gives the child the ability to sing beautifully during the day--and the bird will retain it at night. And, supposedly, that is why these birds only sing at night.This is a very sweet tale and is very well done. Engaging and exceptionally well done for a silent short. Well worth seeing even if the story is a tad confusing from time to time (it could have used better intertitle cards).

The Voice of the Nightingale is Ladislaw Starewicz's most charming short about birds and their relationship with nature and humans. It stars his daughter as a girl who keeps the bird after he accidentally wrecks her doll while walking through her trap cage. The bird briefly turns into a rat while captured, frightening the girl (and us!). The captured bird sings hanging on a windowsill as the girl dreams first of a grasshopper and spider fighting over a pixie captured in spider's web, and then of the caged bird's wife, whom he was looking for when the girl got him, leaving their child alone. She wakes up and frees her pet. As reward, she now has a beautiful singing voice. Besides the story, there's also wonderful color-tinting to be awed and inspired by. So if you love Ladislaw Starewicz's work, seek out the DVD from Image Entertainment, The Cameraman's Revenge and Other Fantastic Tales.

Amazing mix of stop-motion animation and live-action little girl, all in color! I can't identify the process, as Technicolor was not available in Europe when this picture was made and the technique looks lifelike. A certain amount of bleeding around the greens and yellows leads me to suspect this is a mixture of color photography and tinting.As for the story, it is told with Wladyslaw Starewicz's usual charm and good humor. A must for any animation fan. Check it out on Milestone's THE CAMERAMAN'S REVENGE set.