Stille Nacht: Dramolet (1988) User Reviews

Best 1 minute short movie ever. Or, is it the only one?

[fjhuerta-2 · 8/10 · 15 March 2004]

This movie comes straight out of your worst nightmares. I remember watching it when I was 13 years old; I had a fever and was staying at home. I could not forget this film until 16 years later, when I finally found who did it (and got the DVD).

There's no plot whatsoever in this movie - I guess that's what makes it so special. As every other film by the Brothers Quay, this is a disjointed trip into someone's imagination. The best description I can find of it is that it's the closest thing I've ever seen to a dream - no wonder I thought for a while this movie didn't exist, and that I had dreamed it!

The only thing going against it is that it's just too short - it was ideal for MTV, circa 1988, but it definitely leaves you expecting something more out of it.

Fun and absurd

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 11 October 2006]

This short is utterly delightful. There's not much to it in terms of what is available to be seen and commented on, but there is a lot to it in terms of what was done and how. Instead of flecking their sets with dust and hair, the brothers Quay place a magnet in a field and let the magnet play with all the little magnetic fragments. It's creepy... but it's fun! I honestly don't know what to make of the babydoll that watches the whole thing, eventually to turn and attempt to eat a meal, but it doesn't make me want to eat anything anytime soon! I think this is more something the brothers have done in order to experiment with something they haven't yet put into a longer film, but wanted to do regardless.

--PolarisDiB

Says more in one minute than many feature length films

[Rectangular_businessman · 10/10 · 14 February 2012]

This is the kind of short that I could see several times, and it never fails to impress me: In only a minute, and without any dialogue, this fascinating short directed by the Quay Brothers ("Street of Crocodiles") has not only a wonderful, dream-like atmosphere and a magnificent visual style, but also posses a unique sense of beauty and lyricism that is hard to find in any other kind of film, even in those movies that try to hard to be "poetical" and "subjetive".

However, this manages to work incredibly well, turning the whimsical qualities of the dreams into stop-motion animation. I think that if this short were made in live-action, it just won't have the same effect.

Wicked spoon baby: ruler of the grim dominion of the metal dust!

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 10/10 · 12 June 2013]

This rather magnetic and unusual short is a very brief and simple one. Plot-wise, it doesn't have one-but in terms of mood and awe it is very great. Perhaps not so great as to deserve a perfect ten, but I did anyway. Didn't see why not, there's nothing wrong with it and it does everything it's supposed to in the minute space of time afforded it. The way it looks and feels is so hypnotising that the short seems to just whizz by in the span of a breath. It's weird, I've seen short films that were even smaller than this that somehow felt bigger, if you know what I mean. It makes me laugh how even with something as tiny and ungraspable as this some people have to analyse and declare what they think it "means" just so they can feel so much smarter than all the stupid little people who don't. There is nothing to figure out here, it's merely an enchanting flicker of Gothic magic to titillate and play off the senses, and to me it sort of feels like a test run they tried, to show the viewer a sample of the astonishing work they were capable of. ::: Not much to see, but there's so much with so little. There's a chipped and ragged-looking clown doll, and a spoon gathering what I'm guessing is metallic shavings that look like crawling moss. I used to like to magnetise and play with that stuff in woodwork class when I was a kid. I'm very tempted to describe the doll as "creepy", but it's not really. The whole short is alien and bizarre and completely surreal as heck, but it's definitely not frightening. To me, all of the Brothers Quay animations teeter on the edge of being eerie, but right from the beginning I always found all the ghost-like sounds and imagery within to be classy and soothing, in an ethereal kind of way. No, I don't believe it's horror what the Quay's were all about. They're all dark, and beautiful. Art for the eyes, for the mind, for the soul....

More weird than scary

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 4 August 2015]

"Stille Nacht I" is an American (very) short movie with a runtime of only one minute. It is black-and-white and was shot by the Quay Twins (among America's most famous animators in the first half of the 20th century) as the first of so far five entries to their "Silent Night" short film series. We see creepy dolls, spoons and just feel a general aura of discomfort. The creepy music certainly helps the overall picture. However, I was not scared once and this should usually be the goal of a horror film. It was just strange and weird somehow. All in all, I would not recommend this and I really hope that the next entries to this series will be superior to this forgettable one here.

Short and Sweet

[Tornado_Sam · 25 March 2018]

Without a doubt, "Stille Nacht I: Dramolet" is the shortest film of Stephen and Timothy Quay. At only one minute, a movie this brief made by them feels somewhat lacking in something, it ends before it begins and in general there is not that much to it. The ultra-short run-time also leaves the viewer hanging in a spot, and while some might consider that to be a bad thing (as a previous reviewer stated) I think it actually works better this way. Ending so suddenly, it leaves the audience with a sense of mystery, causing you to wonder if you truly experienced it.

"Dramolet" consists of a magnet spinning in place, and an animated doll puppet watching. The imagery, as always, is so nightmare-inducing and utterly haunting it's as though you are in an entirely different dimension when you visit the world of the Quays. Their creepy antique dolls and dreamscape surroundings place the viewer in someone's imagination rather than a location of reality. When compared to the other movies the Quay Brothers made with similar imagery and boasting much longer run-times, this comes up mostly as a pleasant diversion and a brief sample to show someone not familiar with them. But as a stand-alone work, this works quite well.