I feel lots of people view silent-era cartoons as a footnote in animation historical past. I’ve actually made that mistake up to now. However a short look over the treasure trove of animation produced in 1926 reveals a degree of creativity that’s really staggering.
For starters, check out this clip from the hilarious and underrated 1926 Max Fleischer cartoon It’s the Cats (newly restored by Thunderbean Animation) which mixes animation, live-action, puppetry, stop-motion, and the whole lot else to create a wacky climax in contrast to any you’ve ever seen:
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The most effective movies of 1926 is the visually beautiful fantasy The Adventures of Prince Achmedthe earliest surviving animated characteristic (launched over a decade earlier than Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). Pioneering feminine animator Lotte Reiniger crafted the movie utilizing silhouette animation methods which might be nonetheless inspiring. Simply have a look at the ornate element of the units and expressive actions of the shadow puppets, which Reiniger created nearly solely by herself at 24 frames per second:
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Felix the Cat, the primary bona fide animated cartoon star, was the preferred cartoon character on the earth in 1926. Producer Pat Sullivan took all of the credit score, however the true genius behind Felix was Otto Messmer, who was anonymously writing, directing, and animating the cartoons that Sullivan put his identify to (Messmer additionally wrote and drew the day by day newspaper strip, which Sullivan signed). It was Messmer’s artistic character that gave life to Felix, and his movies are filled with reality-bending pleasures like this one from Two-Lip Time:
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The opposite well-known cartoon cat of the period was Krazy Kat, loosely primarily based on George Herriman’s cartoon masterpiece. The mid-’20s Krazys had been animated by Invoice Nolan, who doesn’t get sufficient love nowadays contemplating he created rubber hose animation, which has had a latest resurgence because of Cuphead. Simply have a look at the stressed, elastic power on this Invoice Nolan scene from Scents and Nonsense (from Tommy José Stathes’ assortment):
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Probably the most ingenious cartoons of the Twenties had been the Out of the Inkwell shorts from Max Fleischer, who later produced the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons. The sequence starred Ko-Ko the Clown and his canine Fitz, who would ceaselessly leap off the drafting board into the true world. The demented finale to the basic Ko-Ko the Convict is a must-see. This factor simply retains topping itself in visible madness:
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Max Fleischer created the Out of the Inkwell sequence to point out off his invention, the rotoscope, which allowed animation to be traced from live-action footage. By 1926, nevertheless, Ko-Ko had been given a closely caricatured redesign by Dick Huemer and the studio relied much less on rotoscoping in favor of fantastic only-in-a-cartoon gags like this one from Ko-Ko Sizzling After It:
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The Fleischer studio nonetheless discovered particular events to tug out the previous rotoscope, as on this eye-popping bit from Ko-Ko’s Queen. Notice that the crew needed to construct a large tabletop set simply to make this scene work:
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One other sequence that cleverly mixed live-action and animation was Walter Lantz’s Sizzling Canine cartoons, which started in 1926 and starred Pete the Pup (to not be confused with Lantz’s 1932 creation Pooch the Pup… this may all be on the check). That’s Walter Lantz himself getting blown to kingdom come on this clip from Pete’s Haunted Home:
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Walt Disney puzzled lots of people when he mentioned, as late as 1930, that “my ambition was to have the ability to make cartoons pretty much as good because the Aesop’s Fables sequence.” Paul Terry’s work is often thought-about lower-tier amongst golden age cartoon followers, but it surely’s simple to see why his silent Fables had been crowd-pleasers. This bit from Looking in 1950, starring the long-suffering Farmer Al Falfa, is sharper and funnier than lots of Terry’s sound movies.
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Talking of Walt Disney, we’re somewhat method off from Mickey Mouse coming into the general public area, however there are many proto-Mickey rodents scampering round in Disney’s Alice Comedies, with Alice’s Brown Derby being a top-notch instance:
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Even at this early stage, you may see Disney flirting with a vestigial type of character animation. This nice scene from Alice Helps the Romance will get laughs from appearing nuances, one thing Disney would increase on within the Nineteen Thirties:
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On the flip aspect, these early Disney cartoons differ barely from the studio’s later work of their blunt and callous humorousness. Alice’s Orphan is especially cynical:
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A number of the silent Disney cartoons are downright morbid. The weird Alice’s Mysterious Thriller considerations a dog-killing operation run by cloaked villains that evoke the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was on the top of its affect within the Twenties, so I ponder what the response was to this expressly destructive depiction of the group.
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Equally ugly is the Mutt and Jeff quick Canine Gone, the place Jeff dons a canine go well with to win some prize cash on the canine present (the dumbest and due to this fact funniest get-rich-quick scheme in movie historical past) and almost will get floor into sausage hyperlinks. That is really sick stuff, however actually, actually humorous. Think about making an attempt to pitch this to a community right this moment:
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The Mutt and Jeff cartoons, primarily based on Bud Fisher’s cartoon, are sadly underrated, most likely as a result of so few survive out of the 292(!) movies produced. Taking part in with Fireplace delivers one hilarious joke after one other, and ends on this all-timer of a sight gag:
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One other extremely artistic joke, from A number of Water. I don’t recall ever seeing one other gag like this in the entire 96 years since this cartoon got here out:
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Fleischer veteran Dick Huemer directed the Mutt and Jeff cartoons of the 1925/26 sequence, and a number of the darkish creativeness of the Fleischer cartoons discovered its method into the movies. The splendidly spooky Slick Sleuths includes a transformative shadowy character named The Phantom, who has so many artistic potentialities he might helm his personal animated sequence. Possibly that may nonetheless occur now that the movie is within the public area.
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Charley Bowers, a director on the Mutt and Jeff sequence, would possibly’ve been the primary animator to make the swap to live-action filmmaking. His jaw-dropping movies, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, mix Chaplin-esque slapstick with loopy stop-motion results to create surreal visible fireworks. This man was method forward of his time, as evidenced in Egged On:
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This bit from Charley Bowers’ Now You Inform One looks as if it ought to be a meme:
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The oldest present clay-animated movie (later dubbed “claymation” by Will Vinton) is 1926’s Lengthy Dwell the Bull! by Chinese language-American animator Joseph Sunn. This sequence was known as Ralph Wolfe’s Mud Stuff, suggesting that the figures had been speculated to seem like mud come to life:
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For anime followers, A Story of Tobacco is a captivating early Japanese animated quick by Noburō Ōfuji, which takes a cue from the Out of the Inkwell cartoons, solely utilizing paper cut-outs as a substitute of conventional cel animation:
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And outdoors of conventional narrative movie, German artist Hans Richter was one of many first to experiment with summary animation. His 1926 movie movie examine makes use of blended media to create a weird dadaist nightmare with floating eyeballs:
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Watching these 1926 cartoons, it’s fascinating to see the bigger tradition mirrored in them. Flappers are an iconic ingredient of the Roaring Twenties, and “vamps” present up everywhere in cartoons of the time, most notably Felix the Cat Busts a Bubble:
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And though these cartoons are silent, they make it clear they had been produced within the Jazz Age. One character does the Charleston in Disney’s Alice Helps the Romance, a dance craze that was on the top of its reputation in 1926:
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In some circumstances, particulars pop up that you simply wouldn’t count on to see in movies this previous. I actually wasn’t ready to see the phrase “swag” present up in Felix the Cat Hunts the Hunter:
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To complete issues off, right here’s the spectacular grand finale to Koko’s Toot Toot. I hope this text impressed you to mess around with or simply watch cartoons from 1926. There’s numerous nice stuff to find.
— Cartoon Examine (@CartoonStudy) January 14, 2022
A number of the restorations featured listed here are by Steve Stanchfield at Thunderbean Animation, Tommy José Stathes of the Stathes Archive, and maxfleischercartoons.com.