Miaou!

Over at the Agony Booth forum, the topic of great animated films was raised. One person posted a link to something I'd never heard of; I followed it, and I was knocked out.

Ladislas Starevich was a Russian stop-motion animator who got his start in the 1910s by taking dead beetles, removing their legs and mandibles, and reattaching them with wax, thus turning them into puppets. He would go on to work in France, where he created Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox). Here, a tomcat serenades his lady love.



Check out that last shot, where she sighs, and remind yourself this is stop-motion animation.