One of the earliest surviving animated films, Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie" (1908) uses stop-motion photography and a series of chalk drawings to help bring to life a variety of simple, stick-like figures.
Only 2 minutes long, the film stunned audiences over a hundred years ago. Today its elastic images and kaleidoscopic transformations can be quickly replicated by any kid with a computer, but back in 1908, they required painstaking work by Cohl, who made over 700 drawings, all of which were individually "printed" on celluloid.
"Fantasmagorie" was made during Paris' Luminous Years, a period (1900-1930s) in which the city was a hotbed of new artistic movements and activity. Such a cauldron attracted everyone from Picasso to Igor Stravinsky to Hemingway to Gretrude Stein. Then WW2 came, and the city silenced.
7/10 - Of historical interest only.
Only 2 minutes long, the film stunned audiences over a hundred years ago. Today its elastic images and kaleidoscopic transformations can be quickly replicated by any kid with a computer, but back in 1908, they required painstaking work by Cohl, who made over 700 drawings, all of which were individually "printed" on celluloid.
"Fantasmagorie" was made during Paris' Luminous Years, a period (1900-1930s) in which the city was a hotbed of new artistic movements and activity. Such a cauldron attracted everyone from Picasso to Igor Stravinsky to Hemingway to Gretrude Stein. Then WW2 came, and the city silenced.
7/10 - Of historical interest only.