Gertie the Dinosaur
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1991. | ||
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 One of the greatest cartoons before Mickey Mouse.
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Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur. McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay's employer William Randolph Hearst curtailed McCay's vaudeville activities, so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release renamed Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist, and Gertie. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour (c. 1921), after producing about a minute of footage.
Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates (1912). The American J. Stuart Blackton and the French Émile Cohl had experimented with animation even earlier; Gertie being a character with an appealing personality distinguished McCay's film from these earlier "trick films". Gertie was the first film to use animation techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loops. It influenced the next generation of animators such as the Fleischer brothers, Otto Messmer, Paul Terry, and Walt Disney. John Randolph Bray unsuccessfully tried to patent many of McCay's animation techniques and is said to have been behind a plagiarized version of Gertie that appeared a year or two after the original. Gertie is the best preserved of McCay's films—some of which have been lost or survive only in fragments—and has been preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress' National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 1991.
Plot
The cartoonist, Winsor McCay, brings the Dinosaurus back to life in the figure of his latest creation, Gertie the Dinosaur.
Why It Rocks
- It may not be the first film to combine live-action and animation, or heck even the first animated film (Little Nemo and How a Mosquito Operates -- also created by McCay -- both got released before that title) although it still greatly advanced techniques of movement in animation and even helped influence careers for Walt Disney, Tex Avery and lots of other cartoonists.
- It is the very first film to ever be created by 20th Century Fox (known as Fox Film Corporation at the time), making Fox the third oldest of the six most successful American film companies.
- The titular dinosaur has a strong, appealing personality with a childlike wonder and a giant appetite.
- What sets Gertie the Dinosaur apart from McCay's earlier works is not only that this one has an actual narrative (in part so McCay could interact with the character in front of the audience), but also because this short introduced a new innovation called "cycling:" creating a repeatable sequence of movement to minimize drawing new material – particularly useful for backgrounds. Plus, it pushes McCay's mastery of perspective and mass to the limits and creates something you can't get from live action.
- Aside from "cycling", the short also featured keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper and the Mutoscope action viewer.
- The animation style was absolutely groundbreaking for its time, and it still continues to wow audiences today. McCay's chief contribution to the field was his ability to imbue animals and inanimate objects with human personalities, with was unheard of back in the 1910s.
Reception
Gertie pleased audiences and reviewers. It won the praise of drama critic Ashton Stevens in Chicago, where the act opened. On February 22, 1914, before Hearst had barred the New York American from mentioning McCay's vaudeville work, a columnist in the paper called the act "a laugh from start to finish ... far funnier than his noted mosquito drawings". On February 28, the New York Evening Journal called it "the greatest act in the history of motion picture cartoonists". Émile Cohl praised McCay's "admirably drawn" films, and Gertie in particular, after seeing them in New York before he returned to Europe. Upon its theatrical release, Variety magazine wrote the film had "plenty of comedy throughout" and that it would "always be remarked upon as exceptionally clever".
In 1994, Gertie the Dinosaur was voted #6 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. It currently has a 7.1 on IMDb.
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