Organchik

Nikolai Khodataev's last major film is a twenty-minute ink-and-woodcut satire drawn from the Organchik chapter of Saltykov-Shchedrin's History of a Town. A tsar sends to the town of Glupov whichever subject shouts loudest; into that man's head is fitted a little organ that can play only two phrases: "I will not tolerate it!" and "I will ruin them!" The governor collects a two-ruble arrears as if it were a military victory, then rides a troika that, in Khodataev's invented coda, bursts into the 1930s and dies in front of a cooperative. Georgy Echeistov, Daniil Cherkes, and Khodataev designed the figures in the graphic manner of Vladimir Favorsky: black-and-white engravings that move. There is music by G. Lobachev but almost no speech, only the organ's two commands. After one more short, Khodataev left animation, convinced the industry had no room for this kind of experiment.