The Night Before Christmas (1961 film)

The Night Before Christmas, also known as Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (Russian: Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки, romanized: Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki), is a 1961 Soviet fantasy film directed by Aleksandr Rou,^[1] based on a "Christmas Eve", first story in the second volume of the 1832 collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol.^[2]

This eccentric and fantastical fairy tale takes place near the village of Dikanka on the night before Christmas. Amid carol singing, drunken revelry, and amorous hijinks, the blacksmith Vakula persuades the Devil to fly him to Saint Petersburg, where he hopes to obtain a pair of the Empress's heels which might win him Oksana's love.

• Aleksandr Khvylya as Chub
• Lyudmyla Myznikova as Oksana
• Yuri Tavrov as Vakula^[3]
• Lyudmila Khityaeva as Solokha
• Sergei Martinson as Osip, the Sacristan
• Anatoly Kubatsky as Panas
• Vera Altayskaya as Wife of Panas
• Dmitri Kapka as Shanuvalenko
• Mykola Yakovchenko as Patsyuk
• Maryna Sidorchuk as Odarka
• Aleksandr Radunsky as The Head
• Georgi Millyar as The Devil / gossip girl
• Aleksei Smirnov as ambassador
• Irina Murzaeva as gossip woman
• Andrei Demyanenko as Sverbyguz

• The Night Before Christmas at IMDb
• Evenings On A Farm Near Dikanka (1961) on YouTube (English subtitles)
• The Night Before Christmas is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive