We're all firming up our lists of the best new films of 2007- at least, I know I am. But I think it's also important to look back at the classics we finally caught up with this past year. I've seen some real corkers, but none has stuck with me quite like the 1933 animated short Night on Bald Mountain. Directed by husband-and-wife team Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, this short made excellent use of Modeste Mussorgsky's composition, beating Fantasia to the punch by seven years. While Alexeieff and Parker lacked Disney's resources, the film is nonetheless one of the most visually ravishing animated films I've ever seen.
But while one can appreciate Night on Bald Mountain without knowing anything about it, knowing about Alexeieff and Parker's animation technique makes the film feel like something of a miracle. The film was the first to utilize "pin screen animation", a technique pioneered by Alexeieff and Parker. Pin screen was a form of stop-motion animation that used a large screen filled with thousands of pins (hence the name). Images were created by moving the pins in and out as needed, as lights shining from the side of the screen would provide greater illumination to the pins that were pushed out than the ones that were pushed in. The filmmakers would then photograph a single frame, move the pins slightly, and start again.
Understandably, this was a painstaking process, and it took months and even years for Alexeieff and Parker to complete their short films. Because of this, the filmmakers only finished six pin screen shorts in their lifetimes. In addition, Orson Welles fans (and I'm assuming the great majority of you fall into this category) will recognize the technique from the prologue to Welles' 1962 adaptation of The Trial. Alexeieff and Parker demonstrated the technique for posterity in the film Pin Screen, which can be found on disc 7 of the DVD set Norman McLaren: The Master's Edition. Many of Alexeieff and Parker's other films can also be viewed on YouTube.
So what were some of the best classics you saw for the first time in 2007? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
