arts, ideas & societyThe Public Domain Review1912 · Kaunas, Lithuania
A 1912 stop-motion film used dead beetles as actors, with their legs wired on
The Cameraman's Revenge, made in 1912 by Ladislas Starevich, is a stop-motion film whose cast is real insect corpses. Starevich first tried filming live stag beetles fighting, but they froze under the heat of the lights, so he switched to dead ones. He separated each insect's legs and jaws from its body and reattached them with fine wire, so he could pose them in costumes and place swords in their hands. The film is a comic tale of adultery and voyeurism told entirely by bugs.
Stop-motion animation works by photographing a figure, moving it a tiny amount, and photographing again, so that playback shows continuous motion. Starevich used wire armatures inside the dead insects so they could hold poses between frames.
The film is often cited as among the first puppet animations, and it appeared years before most people had seen animated film at all. Its themes of watching and being watched anticipate later films such as Rear Window and Peeping Tom. Starevich made nearly a hundred films over half a century, many of which are now lost.
Some early audiences were so puzzled by Starevich's films that critics suggested he had trained a real flea circus.
Image: The Public Domain Review
