The Marriage of the Bear 1925
The Marriage of the Bear (Russian: Медвежья свадьба, romanized: Medvezhya svadba) (aka The Bear's Wedding) is a 1925 Soviet silent horror-fantasy drama film directed by Konstantin Eggert and Vladimir Gardin. It is based on the play with the same name by Anatoli Lunacharsky, which in turn was based on Prosper Mérimée's novella Lokis (Lithuanian for "bear").
Prosper Merimee wrote a number of bizarre, macabre stories, of which Lokis is one. He was also the author of La Venus d'Ille which Italian horror director Mario Bava adapted to film in 1978. The Russian silent film with its lycanthropic theme predates Universal's later werewolf films, such as The Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941). But with prints of this film almost impossible to view (although it is said to still exist in a couple of archives), it's difficult to determine if the "man-into-beast" scenes of the film refers to a literal shapeshifter, or if it's just a psychological condition that affects the main character's mind. Critic Troy Howarth calls it "possibly the first depiction of a man-into-beast scenario (in a horror film)"
