an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

"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.

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....

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.

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.