Preceded by short:The Magic Clock (L'Horloge magique, ou Histoire de la petite fille qui voulait être princesse) (Ladislaw Starewicz, France, 1928). Although Starewicz's puppet animations are one of the glories of the genre, the man himself has remained something of an enigma. His work widely known in the twenties and thirties, today he is mainly a cult figure, one of the famous unknowns of European history. The Magic Clock is an original fairy tale, a storybook romance with a princess, white and black knights, and a dragon, that draws on an unusually wide range of sources. Hoffman's The Nutcracker and medieval romances ride side-by-side with Arabian Nights, Ovid, Midsummer Night's Dream, and more. We present the film with a recording of the orchestral score Paul Dessau composed for the film when it originally appeared in Germany in 1929. With Starewicz, Nina Starr (a.k.a. Nina Starewicz). (44 mins, Tinted, 16mm, From Museum of Modern Art)In the beguiling Leslie Caron vehicle Lili, a French orphan girl joins a carnival and falls in love with its glamorous (and secretly married) magician. But her real friends are the puppets, or so it seems. Their engagement with Lili is so believable even we are taken in, but then, we have checked our cynicism for ciné-cism at the first Technicolor image of this charming film. Mel Ferrer as the moody, disabled puppeteer would have Lili on hand if only she loved him. Ah, but the song of love is a sad song; what happens to Lili's "carnival desires" is the subject of Russell Merritt's lecture.