Jump to content

Little Nemo (1911 film): Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
No edit summary
perspective
Line 32: Line 32:
==Style==
==Style==


McCay's drawings are in his familiar, heavily-outlined [[Art Nouveau]] style.{{sfn|Bukatman|2012|p=111}} There are no backgrounds; McCay's first film with backgrounds was 1914's ''[[Gertie the Dinosaur]]''.{{sfn|Bukatman|2012|p=114}} The film's good reception motivated McCay to hand-color each of the frames of the originally black-and-white film.{{sfn|Canemaker|2005|p=163}}
McCay's drawings are in his familiar, heavily-outlined [[Art Nouveau]] style.{{sfn|Bukatman|2012|p=111}} There are no backgrounds; McCay's first film with backgrounds was 1914's ''[[Gertie the Dinosaur]]''.{{sfn|Bukatman|2012|p=114}} McCay demonstrated his mastery of [[Perspective (graphical)|linear perspective in scenes such when the dragon disappears smoothly into the distance.{{sfn|Bukatman|2012|p=117}} The film's good reception motivated McCay to hand-color each of the frames of the originally black-and-white film.{{sfn|Canemaker|2005|p=163}}


==Background==
==Background==

Revision as of 08:22, 4 June 2013

Little Nemo
A color film still. A green dragon with its mouth gaping wide carries a fancily-dressed boy and girl. The girl, to the left, carries a large rose, and the boy, to the right, waves with his hat towards the audienc.
Little Nemo and the Princess ride away in the mouth of a dragon
Directed byWinsor McCay
Release date
April 8, 1911
Running time
10:34
CountryUnited States
Languages

Little Nemo, also known as Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics, is a 1911 animated short film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. Based on his comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, it was McCay's first animated film, and one of the earliest animated films in history.

Inspired by the flip books his son brought home,[1] McCay "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons. He claimed that he "was the first man in the world to make animated cartoons", though he was preceded by James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl.[2] McCay made four thousand drawings on rice paper for his first animated short, which starred his Little Nemo characters. They were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's supervision. Live-action sequences were added to the beginning and end of the film, in which McCay bets his newspaper colleagues that in one month he can make four thousand drawings that move. Among those featured in these sequences were cartoonist George McManus and actor John Bunny.[3] Little Nemo debuted in movie theatres on April 8, 1911, and four days later McCay began using it as part of his vaudeville act.[3] Its good reception motivated him to hand-color each of the frames of the originally black-and-white film.[4]

Content

Little Nemo (1911)

Following credits proclaiming McCay as "The Famous Cartoonist of the New York Herald"[5] and "the first artist to attempt drawing pictures that will move",[6] McCay sits in a restaurant with a group of colleagues, cartoonist George McManus and actor John Bunny among them. McCay bets the group that in one month he can make 4,000 drawings move. The group laughs at him, and imply he is either drunk or crazy. McCay sets to work in a studio, where he directs workers to move around bundles of paper and barrels of ink. A month later, McCay gethers his colleagues in front of a mive projector. McCay hand rapidly sketches characters from the cast of his Little Nemo comic strip.[7]

Film still of a hand sketching three cartoon characters.
Winsor McCay sketches three of his Little Nemo characters, Impie, Nemo, and Flip.

McCay places a drawing of the character Flip in a wooden slot in front of the camera. The words "Watch me move" appear above his head, and he begins to make gestures while smoking his cigar. Blocks fall from the sky and assemble themselves into the character Impie, and the pair's figures distort, disappear, and reappear, before a fantastically-dressed Little Nemo magically materializes. Nemo prevents the two others from fighting, and takes control of their forms—he stretches them and squashes them with the raising and lowering of his arms. Nemo then draws the Princess and brings her to animated life. Nemo gives her a rose which has suddenly grown nearby, just as a gigantic dragon appears.[8] The pair seat themselves on a throne in the dragon's mouth[9] and wave to the audience as the dragon carries them away.[8]

Style

McCay's drawings are in his familiar, heavily-outlined Art Nouveau style.[10] There are no backgrounds; McCay's first film with backgrounds was 1914's Gertie the Dinosaur.[11] McCay demonstrated his mastery of [[Perspective (graphical)|linear perspective in scenes such when the dragon disappears smoothly into the distance.[9] The film's good reception motivated McCay to hand-color each of the frames of the originally black-and-white film.[4]

Background

French animator Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908)

McCay claimed he was "the first man in the world to make animated films",[2] but he was likely familiar with the earlier work of American James Stuart Blackton and the French Émile Cohl.[2] In 1900, Blackton produced The Enchanted Drawing, a trick film in which an artist interacts with a drawing on an easel.[3] Blackton used chalk drawings in 1906 to animate the film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces,[3] and used stop motion techniques to animate a scene in the 1907 film The Hauted Hotel.[2] Cohl's films such as 1908's Fantasmagorie were dreamlike nonnarrative films in which characters and scenes continually changed shape. Cohl's films were first distributed in the United States in 1909, the year McCay said he first became interested in animation. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker, McCay combined the interactive qualities of Blackton's films with the abstract, shapeshifting qualities of Cohl's into his own films.[3] In the films of all three, the artist interacts with the animation.[5]

Production

By late 1910, McCay had made 4000 drawings on rice paper for the animated portion of the film. Each was assigned a serial number, and marks were made in the top corners for registration. They were mounted on sheets of cardboard to make them easier to handle and photograph. Before he had them photographed, he tested them on a Mutoscope-like machine to ensure the animation was fluid. Photography was done at the Vitagraph Studios under the supervision of Blackton.[3] The animated portion took up about four minutes of the film's total length.[8]

Release

Two colored film strips.
Originally in black-and-white, McCay later hand-colored the film.

Distributed by Vitagraph, the film debuted in theaters on April 8, 1911. McCay included the film as part of his vaudeville act beginning April 12.[3]

Reception and legacy

Mark Winokur noted racial hierarchies in the Little Nemo strip and film. The Anglo-Saxon Nemo is depicted as "most human", while flip is drawn as a minstrel caricature, and the mute Impie is most grotesquely caricatured. Nemo, at the top of this hierarchy, exerts his authority over the other characters, as when he distorts them with magic.[12]

References

  1. ^ Beckerman 2003; Canemaker 2005, p. 157.
  2. ^ a b c d Canemaker 2005, p. 157.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Canemaker 2005, p. 160.
  4. ^ a b Canemaker 2005, p. 163.
  5. ^ a b Bukatman 2012, p. 109.
  6. ^ Bukatman 2012, p. 110.
  7. ^ Canemaker 2005, pp. 160–161.
  8. ^ a b c Canemaker 2005, p. 161.
  9. ^ a b Bukatman 2012, p. 117.
  10. ^ Bukatman 2012, p. 111.
  11. ^ Bukatman 2012, p. 114.
  12. ^ Winokur 2012, pp. 58, 63.

Works cited

  • Bukatman, Scott (2012). The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-95150-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Template:Cite isbn
  • Template:Cite isbn
  • Winokur, Mark (2012). "Creole Cartoons". In Kessel, Martina; Merziger, Patrick (eds.). The Politics of Humour: Laughter, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Twentieth Century. University of Toronto Press. pp. 52–81. ISBN 978-1-4426-4292-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Nemo_(1911_film)&oldid=558255380"