Having finished his business with Pathé Frères, director Segundo de Chomón returned to cinematography after 1912 and following his settlement with Pathé became a cameraman for Italia Films thereafter. One of his main achievements during the next following years was his involvement in the filming of Giovanni Pastrone's "Cabiria" and he continued work with special effects and cinematography in Italy until 1917. That was the year that Pastrone directed this effort, "The War and the Dream of Momi", a curious mix of puppetry, stop-motion animation and live action which seems quite out of place for the year. Even though made three years after "Cabiria", the drama and battle scenes of this forty-minute short are not particularly well done, nor does it have an especially inspired story for forty minutes. Thus, as a result of it's simplicity and the fact it also came after Pastrone's popular epic, this short is little-recognized today.
On several sites online, "La guerra ed il sogno di Momi" has been actually listed as being only a co-directed effort from Pastrone, with Chomón as the other director. This is highly debatable but I myself think that because the Spaniard had been at work on special effects and camerawork since 1912, he was no doubt only responsible for the effects and may possibly have participated in the writing of the story as well. I can well see some of the action scenes in this 1917 film being reminiscent of "Cabiria", and the fact I can feel similarities proves more or less that Pastrone was mostly in control.
The plot of this film is simple yet drawn out a little bit much for forty minutes. A little boy named Momi is read a story by his grandpa, the stereotypical depiction of an old geezer in his big white beard. The story, portrayed in a live action sequence, is a fairly simple narrative of a poor woman and her son who's house is ransacked by the enemy and set on fire. The boy, luckily, is able to escape the soldiers and sounds the alarm; they arrive just in time to save the woman and the boy, who returned to save her but fainted from the smoke. After hearing this story, the boy plays with several of his puppets before dozing off and dreaming a nightmare where scenes of World War I are enacted by puppets for the second half of the film.
The most interesting part of this, and the part Segundo de Chomón contributed to the making of the short, is the puppet animation and how they constructed a miniature model set to create this half. The animation is quite good for 1917 and works yet grows bland after a bit; the entire sequence is lacking in a plot but contains some great effects. As for the live-action sequence, that could easily have been done much better if D. W. Griffith was in the director's chair, and it lacks an intriguing sense of excitement building which he alone could have added. As it is, this sequence still half works in creating a sense of drama.
In general, this movie is just very odd in its combination of live action drama and animation, and in the simple story it has is rather half-decent. A very unique work for the period and innovative in the combo it makes, but could have been better had it been more attention-holding and maybe shorter.
