Acting
A drunken gardener is challenged to a poker match by agents of the Devil; replete with location shots in Hades of the Devil giving orders to his agents on Earth.
A clockmaker’s daughter daydreams of a magic world inside a clock.
A young girl who has caught a nightingale dreams about the songbird and its mate, and comes to realize that birds are not meant to be captive.
The film is a delightful tale of a spoiled wedding between child's toys which shows Starewicz's typical style of making amusing films appropriate for children without much sentimentality. As in many of his other films, his daughter Nina plays the role of the child.
A little girl working as a carnival dancer is given a gift of a caterpillar as a joke. She spares the caterpillar's life, and becomes the Queen of the Butterflies. The film combines live-action sequences starring the director's daughter Jeanne (aka Nina Star) with puppet animation. Full of special effects, as with Starevich's previous films he used deceased insects as the protagonists of the film.
In the night, at the top of a big clock, three little automatons come to life in turn: an agile monkey, a pretty dancer and an acrobatic jester, driven by clever mechanisms. Nina, the clockmaker's little girl, begins to dream. She is a little street singer. And a ballerina in love with a little tin soldier. And a princess in search of her beautiful knight lost in the enchanted forest. From burglary to castle attack, from mermaid to dragon, the adventure never stops... like the hands of a clock.
