A Night on Bald Mountain

I have seen this film several times. It is my favorite pinscreen animation by Alexander Alexeieff and his wife. It is a stunning piece of work and can be thought of as the ultimate demo for the pinscreen.

I wish the films were in better place or that some megolomaniac would do something similar on one of the remaining pinscreens.

See my notes for "The Nose" (La Nez) to see more information on the pinscreen and the couple who used it.

I've always enjoyed the music of Mussorgsky. This is a challenging piece. If only the quality of the print were better. Some of the more significant events were badly muted by age. Not too many years later, Disney approached the same piece and made it more slick. I didn't know this little film even existed.

Lyrical, dark, exceptionally interesting animated film. Occasionally charmingly inarticulate but some very special images here. Inspiring work from an early woman director. Saw it last night as part of the Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941 series playing here in Austin. See it if you get a chance.

Like the other reviewers, I caught this late at night, sat there stunned and mesmerized, and I've since tried to get my hands on it. It's the kind of thing the motion picture camera was invented for, but to go into detail would be pointless. Find it, somehow, and watch it.

Une nuit sur le mont chauve (1933)

**** (out of 4)

Also known as A NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN, this pinscreen short from Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff is so wonderful and so ground-breaking that their names deserve to be remembered right up there with Walt Disney. If you think that's too much praise then I'm going to guess that you haven't seen this film. It took eighteen months to complete and you can tell that by the images on the screen.

Pinscreen animation is the use of a screen with moveable pins. Just the thought of making animation like this boggles my mind but UNE NUIT SUR LE MONT CHAUVE does a masterful job of it and it's really hard to believe that this here was made in 1933. It's amazing how wonderful the images look and in fact you could argue that they're much better than a lot of what we see today. The earlier portion of the film deals with a lot of dark subjects and it's perfectly put to the music of Mussorgsky. As great as that looks, I was even more impressed with the later part of the film where there are a lot more whites used. Just check out the sequence with the white horse.