The Cameraman's Revenge
About The Cameraman's Revenge
A married beetle goes to a nightclub and takes up with a dancer. A cameraman films the meeting without being seen. Later the husband takes his wife to the movies. The reel on the screen is his own night out. The wife watches the proof with the rest of the house. The puppets are dried insects, jointed and moved a frame at a time.
Cast & crew
More about The Cameraman's Revenge
Ladislas Starevich wrote and directed. Aleksandr Khanzhonkov produced. The insects, beetles and other dried specimens, are the entire cast. The Russian title is Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora. It opened on October 27, 1912, and runs 12 minutes.
Themes
Making
Starevich wired dried insects and shot them in stop motion so a nightclub, a camera, and a movie theater could be played by bugs.
Look
Starevich stop-motions the insects against small sets. The cinema inside the film is a screen within that set, showing the earlier nightclub scene.
Technique
Articulated dead insects replace drawn figures. Each gesture is a separate exposure.
Preservation
Prints survive from the 1912 Khanzhonkov release.
Notes
- Grasshoppers and dragonflies are among the specimens, along with the beetles.
- The revenge is a public screening, not a fight.
- Starevich was making these insect films in Moscow for Khanzhonkov.
- Internet Archive holds a copy as silent-the-revenge-of-a-kinematograph-cameraman.
- The husband expects a night at the cinema with his wife and gets his own affair instead.
Scenes
- The cameraman beetle films the husband with the dancer.
- The husband takes his wife to the theater.
- His own night plays on the screen in front of her.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-revenge-of-a-kinematograph-cameraman)
