'Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)' is a short film that features some highly impressive early animation. Its first movement is live-action and involves the film's animator betting his friend that he can make a dinosaur live again. At an expensive lunch, the animator shows off his work. The live-action stuff is a bit dry, but it does a decent job of setting up the animation and isn't particularly boring, either. Apparently, the animator originally performed a live routine alongside screenings of the piece, which would be really cool to be able to see somehow. The picture itself features intertitles that tell you what he's supposed to be saying to the eponymous dinosaur, but it's clear that this was designed as a live experience and it's a shame there isn't any footage, to my knowledge, of one of its original showings. The animation on display here is generally incredible. McCay is clearly a pioneer of the process and he certainly knows what he's doing. Some of the motion is insanely fluid and pretty much all of it has a believable dimensionality to it (Gertie looks almost '3D' despite being flat on every frame). It's great stuff overall. However, occasionally it's a bit ropey. Several motions are repeated by playing the animation forwards and then immediately running it backwards, before repeating the process and letting it play forwards for longer when the filmmaker wants to move past the moment. This seems to be an effort to lengthen the overall sequence without having to draw more time-consuming frames. It's a little disorienting because the motion is only timed to work in one direction (forwards) and any reverse footage just looks a bit cheap. Still, it seems that each frame had to be drawn on a single sheet of paper, which means the entire background had to be redrawn on every frame. That must have taken an incredible amount of skill and patience. In general, the short must have been quite the undertaking. It looks effortless, but - as I know from first hand experience as an animator - it really isn't. The animation industry owes a huge debt to seminal works such as this. Plus, it's still pretty entertaining. 7/10.
Review of Gertie the Dinosaur
