Le rat de ville et le rat des champs (1927)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Wladyslaw Starewicz

Writer:

Wladyslaw Starewicz (writer)

Genre:

Short

Plot:

The Country Rat visits his friend, the Town Rat, but finds that life in the great metropolis is rather too hectic (and dangerous...

Also Known As:

The Town Rat and the Country Rat (USA)

Runtime:

10 min

Country:

France

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Movie Connections:

Version of Chukichi wa kaetta (1929)

Charming puppet animation from Wladyslaw Starewicz

You don't have to be an animation buff to enjoy this film, which tells the familiar tale of the Country Rat and the City Rat (or mouse, or hamster, or what-have-you) with puppets. The print I've seen hasn't been translated into English, but it won't matter if your French is rusty for the intertitles are brief and simple. Director Wladyslaw Starewicz was born in Poland, worked in Russia and France over a period of many years, and deserves to be better known, for his films are a real treat.

"Le Rat de Ville et le Rat des Champs" kicks off with hectic shots of the urban rat dealing with city traffic, careening through intersections in front of a rear-projection screen, then leaving Paris for the country, where he promptly smashes his car into a haystack on his cousin's farm. They return to the city together, and the bulk of the film consists of the floor show at a swanky rat nightclub; the star performer is an amusing parody of Josephine Baker, then in her prime. The revelry is interrupted by the arrival of a cat-- a real cat, not a puppet --at which point the country rat, recognizing that city life is too much for him, returns to his farm, where he dreams of his urban adventure.

Like other silent films this one uses title cards to convey dialog and explain the action, but Starewicz also devised a clever method for the rats to warn each other about the approaching cat: when they scream, the animated face of a sinister cat flies from their mouths! Nice idea. My only quibble with this film is that the climax (i.e. the rats' escape from the cat, which clears the nightclub) is followed by a brief but distinctly anticlimactic sequence involving a worm, before the country rat announces his intention to return home. Even so, this is a charming piece of work that ranks with the director's most enjoyable short films.