Last Year's Snow Was Falling

Last Year's Snow Was Falling is a Soviet clay-animated film (with a few cel-animated parts) made in 1983 by Aleksandr Tatarskiy.

It tells a story of a dude whose stern wife sends him to the forest to get a Christmas tree. The guy is lazy, extremely greedy, even more air-headed and "can't spell some letters and digits right".

Can be watched on YouTube with English subtitles.


 * Brick Joke: "Where did the cup go?"
 * The pike and those arguing women show up a lot.
 * Baba Yaga: doesn't appear in person, but Dude spends second half of the short going through her chicken-legged house
 * Catch Phrase: "Aint big enuph!"
 * Decoy Protagonists: The narrator first starts to tell the story about a magical pike, then two arguing women, then a miller, then about a metal cup chained to a can (!), and only then he finds the hero.
 * Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: The dude. Oh yes.
 * False Ending
 * Flying Carpet: one of the magical items in the chicken-legged house
 * Hammerspace: The dude keeps any number of items inside his hat.
 * Interactive Narrator: The woodcutter argues with the narrator and makes demands that the story turn for the better for him
 * Involuntary Shapeshifting: hero suffered through this because he messed with
 * Magic Wand: that was there in chicken-legged house.
 * Mood Whiplash: This extremely wacky and funny cartoon ends with a very sad and moving title score.
 * Mr. Imagination: Our hero spends most of the first segment daydreaming about what life he is gonna have after he catches the hare. All the while, the hare is just standing there, yet to be captured.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Oh. All the damn time.
 * No Name Given: The hero of the short, who is simply identified as "Dude" (Мужик).
 * Not Quite Back to Normal:
 * Talking to Himself: Oleg Sadalsky voices both the narrator and the hero.
 * World of Chaos