Director: Ivan Ivanov-Vano
Release date: 1969
Rating: ★★½
Review:

‘Seasons’ is a very poetic stop-motion film set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The film tells about two lovers through the seasons, although we see mostly images of autumn (the two riding together through a forest) and winter (a lengthy sleigh ride), with summer being reduced to a reminiscence of happier times, and spring hardly identifiable, at all.

The film is directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, but co-directed by Yuri Norstein, and already contains several elements of the later director’s mature style: the stop-motion is close to cut-out animation, there are plenty multi-plane effects, and the filming of the images has a soft, poetic edge to it. The designs are extraordinary beautiful, especially that of the crystalline forest, but as practically nothing happens during the entire film, the result is as enchanting as it is boring.

Watch ‘Seasons’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Seasons’ is available on the DVD ‘Masters of Russian Animation Volume 2’

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