The Cameraman's Revenge
1912 · 13m · Russia
Directed by Władysław Starewicz
Tones: darkly comic, whimsical
In this pioneering stop-motion animated short using real dried insect specimens, Mr. Beetle's extramarital affair with a nightclub dragonfly dancer is secretly filmed by a jealous grasshopper cameraman, who later screens the footage at a cinema while Mr. and Mrs. Beetle are on a date.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Animated dead beetles having affairs and filming each other — 1912. This is the kind of unhinged invention I built my whole sensibility on.
Starewicz's articulated beetles enact infidelity and revenge with a Lubitsch-level economy of suggestion, and the macabre materiality of the dried specimens gives the comedy its bite. One of the genuine miracles of early animation.
Starewicz articulating dried beetle specimens frame by frame for stop motion in 1912 — the puppet rigs themselves were a hand-built innovation, and the meta-film-within-a-film about cinema's own voyeurism is shockingly self-aware for the era. 13:22 runtime confirmed.
Reviews
Starevich's taste, sophistication and imagination were years, perhaps decades ahead of their time. The Cameraman's Revenge hits on several rather mature themes including adultery, the sexual double standard, and voyeurism.
Rear Window, Peeping Tom, Blow-Up, Caché: these films are better known, but they owe a debt to The Cameraman's Revenge.