La reine des papillons

Nina Starr saves a caterpillar's life. Later she dreams it has changed into a beautiful butterfly and all the butterflies and insects have made her their queen. When the evil King of Spiders kidnaps her, all her subjects rush to her aid.

This is, I think, the masterpiece of Wladyslaw Starewicz, who started out as a entomologist trying to take movies of insects and became one of the geniuses of animation. It is not simply his solution of technical problems, like inserting his daughter's image -- for Nina Starr was his daughter -- into his insect-sized sets, and coordinating many of his models' movements into sensible action, like the battle scenes. He offers beauty, with the butterflies and orchestral sections of stridulating crickets. Fantastic yet sensible sets like the Spider King's castle, made of toadstools, and humor in the sabots that some of the insect army wear. He does all this with a professional sense of how these small creatures move, and forms them into a fairy tale that is amazing to behold.