A Night on Bald Mountain

Seven years before Disney used Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia, Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker used it in this pinscreen animation short, a surreal classic. The theme of the original composition is a witch's sabbath on the Slavic holiday of St. John's Eve, celebrating the birth of John the Baptist six months before Christ. The extraordinary images that fly by in this animation with such vitality are not simple to interpret, but one gets the sense of devilish forces gathering on a wild night, preceding a battle. One also wonders how in the world these artists managed to create this using their pinscreen board (even given 18 months), as there is such variety in the textures and images, some hazy, some three dimensional, all highly artistic. Disturbing, phantasmagoric, and ultimately peaceful, it had me watching it several times, and wondering if I should give it an even higher rating.

flipping channels, late at night, stumbled upon this obscure gem. i have been around a few blocks in my time, and this has to be one of the strangest, eeriest flicks i have ever seen. morphing, 3-dimensional shapes, bizarre and addicting. i want to buy this but can't find it anywhere. what tim burton would have done had he been alive in the thirties.

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.

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.