L'horloge magique ou La petite fille qui voulait être princesse / The Magical Clock, or The Little Girl Who Wanted to Be a Princess / Волшебные часы, или История про девочку, которая хотела стать принцессой» / Wladyslaw Starewicz (Владислав Старевич, Ladislas Starevich) / France,1928

This 1928 stop-motion film with such a long and frenchified title directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz (Владислав Старевич, Ladislas Starevich), a grand master of Russian animation. It is mixes puppet animation and live action. The film tells the story of a watchmaker who has made a strange clock that, when it strikes the midnight hour, brings to life a tiny puppet world from inside the clock. The watchmaker's little daughter, Yolande ( Starewicz's daughter Nina Star ), will live together with the puppets, and have strange adventures involving knights and princesses in enchanted forests or mermaids and dragons in a sea world.

Summary:
It's the story of Yolande, a little girl (about 12) who wanted to become a princess. Bombastus, her old father, has created a marvelous and big clock crowded with little characters (animated puppets). On each hour ring, one of the twelve knights of the clock comes into motion. They're all in love with the princess but a strong black knight doesn't agree... It's not a happy end. So Yolande will dive deep into her dreams, maybe to change the story. It's the second part of the movie. Sylph, master of this imaginary earth and Ondin, master of the aquatic world are the main characters. Yolande and then the man of her dreams join this strange world...


Terry Gilliam about Wladyslaw Starewicz (The Guardian , 27 April 2001):
It was at the Sitges film festival that I first saw an exhibition of work by the pioneering Russian animator Wladyslaw Starewicz, and the puppets were so enrapturing that when I got home I ordered up all the tapes I could find of his work. His work is absolutely breathtaking, surreal,inventive and extraordinary, encompassing everything that Jan Svankmajer, Walerian Borowczyk and the Quay Brothers would do subsequently. It is important, before you journey through all these mind-bending worlds, to remember that it was all done years ago, by someone most of us have forgotten about now. This is where it all began.»

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladislas_Starevich
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0823088/

Wladyslaw Starewicz (1882 - 1965), a grand master of animation, was born in Vilno (Russian Empire, now Vilnius, Lithuania] and graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He began making puppet films about 1911 (see 'Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora'), emigrated to France in 1920 and continued to develop there his technique for plastic animation with the help of his two daughters, Irene Starewicz and Nina Star, whose birth-name was Jeannie Starewicz. He, with the help of his daughters, in front of and behind the camera, employed articulated puppets constructed with an extraordinary precision, with features that could be altered at will (with stop-motion)to produce any desired expression, and dressed in costumes designed with great attention to detail. He filmed laboriously, frame by frame, and produced some of the most fantastic storybook characters and tales ever seen on the screen.

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