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.
Review of A Night on Bald Mountain
