Artists drawing pictures were among the earliest animation works of the movies -- Vitagraph founder J. Stuart Blackton had toured in a vaudeville act and appeared in BLACKTON SKETCHES in 1896. In this effort, stage artist Lancelot Speed, aided by the camera, swiftly draws detailed pictuaes of three current images -- the Kaiser, the Cathedral of Reims, and the German artillery gun which destroyed it -- and animates the effort.
It's a propaganda piece to emphasize the barbarity of the German forces and rouse the English nation to fight against them. We often forget, when we speak about the propaganda efforts of Nazi Germany, that the British government led the way during the First World War, making claims of German cruelty so outrageous that after that, when the greater barbarities of the Third Reich came, with the deaths of Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals, that people refused to believe them until after the war.
It's a propaganda piece to emphasize the barbarity of the German forces and rouse the English nation to fight against them. We often forget, when we speak about the propaganda efforts of Nazi Germany, that the British government led the way during the First World War, making claims of German cruelty so outrageous that after that, when the greater barbarities of the Third Reich came, with the deaths of Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals, that people refused to believe them until after the war.
