The Insects' Christmas (1913)

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of Władysław Starewicz's shorts features a Santa ornament coming to life and making Christmas for various forest animals. "Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa" ("The Insects' Christmas" in English) is nothing special, but it's neat seeing the stop-motion work from animation's infancy. My favorite scene is when Santa (or Father Christmas, as the short calls him) whips up the Christmas tree. It just goes to show that animation doesn't have to be "cute". If you ask me, these shorts are more interesting that these animated features starring the celebrities of the moment.Worth seeing. Check it out.

Wladyslaw Starewicz was the father of Russian animation, his highly-imaginative stop-motion insect short films drawing universal acclaim, with his most popular work probably being 'Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora / The Cameraman's Revenge' of 1912. 'Rozhdestvo obitatelei lesa / The Insects' Christmas' was produced the following year, and it is a cheery seven-minute animated Christmas film, emphasising the importance of the holiday as a time to get together and enjoy oneself. The film begins when Father Christmas suddenly awakens during the night of Christmas Eve and clambers down his decorated tree, exiting into the frosty holiday snow to hold a gathering for the "forest children."Starewicz draws on all his favourite stop-motion creatures in this one, with Father Christmas inviting Miss Dragonfly, a ladybug, a grasshopper and an assortment of other beetles and insects to his gathering around the Christmas tree. Even the lanky Mr. Frog gives Father Christmas the honour of his company, though it doesn't take long before Mr. Frog gets into a feud with a beetle over the ownership of a particularly large present. Nonetheless, the general purpose of the film is to promote kindness and togetherness on Christmas, and it's certainly a worthy moral, far removed from the darkly humorous and cynical outlook of 'The Cameraman's Revenge.'Particularly interesting, I thought, was how well 'The Insects' Christmas' was able to create the atmosphere of a bitter winter's night. Aside from the windswept, snowy background that Starewicz must have created, the film takes place entirely against a blue tint. The result is that, even just watching the film, with Father Christmas' robes billowing in the wind, I was starting to feel chilly. The quality of the stop-motion animation is as good as ever, with the insects almost moving naturally (despite walking upright), though Mr. Frog did appear a bit ungainly.

This Christmas film is nearly 100 years old, but it still bears watching today since it was so well-made originally and is awfully cute. The film begins with a Father Christmas ornament coming to life and climbing down the Christmas tree. It then makes its way outside to magically create a Christmas tree for the insects and a frog! All of this is done using excellent stop-motion filming and it is exceptionally smooth and high quality. The entire film is only about six minutes long but the pacing seems absolutely perfect.Oddly towards the end of the film, you see the words "Merry Christmas" above the bugs' Christmas tree but this is written in German. While the inter-title cards could easily be written is a variety of languages, this phrase was made on the film itself. Since it is apparently a Russian-made film, this just took me by surprise.

The Insects' Christmas is interesting in that this may be one of the earliest depictions of the winter holiday in animated form I've ever seen. Certainly of the stop-motion puppet version. The fact that Father Christmas invites both insects and frogs to the celebration shouldn't be surprising since filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz made both The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) and The Frogs Who Wanted a King (1922). Kids may by bored by both the silence and black-and-white photography but it's at least worth a look for animation enthusiasts and Starewicz completists. This and the other shorts I mentioned is available on Milsetone Film and Video's The Cameraman's Revenge and Other Fantastic Tales DVD distributed by Image Entertainment.