Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka

"Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" ("The Night before Christmas") - Soviet full-length color feature film-a fairy tale, released in 1961. The film is an adaptation of the story Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol's "The Night before Christmas" from the cycle "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka".

This is the second film adaptation of the story, the first was released in 1913.

The plot of the film repeats the original story and is a fairy-tale story that takes place on a Ukrainian farm near Dikanka on the night before Christmas. Village blacksmith Vakula, riding the devil, brings from the capital for his beloved Oksana, the daughter of a rich Cossack Chub, "cherevichki" of the queen herself.

Witchcraft abilities are possessed by two characters in the film: the local witch Solokha and the Pot-bellied Patsyuk.

The witch can fly and collect stars from the sky. She is friendly with the Devil – they sit in her hut, drink gorilka and whisper.

Pot-bellied Patsyuk, who also "knows all the devils", is able to levitate small objects: the food itself is dipped in sour cream jumps into his mouth.

One of the main characters of the film is the Devil. It is a completely brown-furred humanoid creature with a tail, small horns, glowing eyes in the dark, a snout instead of a nose and hooves in place of feet.

The devil is intelligent, speaks the human language and has supernatural abilities: he can fly, steal a month from the night sky, create a snowstorm, change the size of his body.

Unlike the 1913 film, the Devil does not try to jump on the Vakula's back to ride it.