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.