Year: 1912
Director: Vladislav Starevich
Country: Russia
Language: N/A
Vladislav Starevich was a stop-motion animator notable as the author of the first puppet-animated film (The Beautiful Lukanida in 1912) His approach to his animation, which was to show that animation could be taken seriously as adult material, gave his pictures a more timeless feel. This makes The Cameraman's Revenge seem a little more modern than every other surviving silent from 104 years ago.
In this short, a jilted husband takes his revenge by filming his wife and her lover and showing the result at the local cinema.
Vladislav Starevich had two main talents; graphic design and entomology (the study of insects). He would often blend these two together and make animated films starring insects, puppets and even the odd human being. He found success in the pre-Revolution Russian film industry making dozens of successful pictures. The Cameraman’s Revenge is his earliest surviving film.
The Cameraman’s Revenge hits on several mature themes that Alfred Hitchcock would eventually become famous for. We get adultery, the sexual double standard and voyeurism. The characters are played by insects, but we don't get the cutesy A Bug's Life Disneyfication of them here. Rather it is a serious melodrama where the insect's behavior is all too human. It's admittedly a very strange film.
The stop-motion animation, which wasn't exactly "new" but still very unique at the time, is complimented by its story and doesn't at all feel like a gimmick. The puppets, props and set designs are extremely detailed. Clearly this world of bourgeois insects must have taken years to prepare.
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