The Night Before Christmas (1951)

The Night Before Christmas (Russian: Ночь пе́ред Рождество́м, Noch pered Rozhdestvom) is a 1951 Russian feature animated film directed by the “grandmothers of the Russian animation”, Brumberg sisters, and produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. The film is based on Nikolai Gogol‘s story The Night Before Christmas. In big degree it was succeeded to present in this screen version of the story of the same name on the screen national color of the Ukrainian village.

The animation features heavy use of rotoscoping, known as “Éclair” in the Soviet Union, and is an example of the Socialist-Realist period in Russian animation. The film is in the public domain in Russia and is widely available on numerous video/DVD releases, mostly along with other films.