On May
7, 1915, the British passenger ocean liner Lusitania
was struck by a torpedo launched by a German U-boat and sank off the Irish
coast. Of its 1,962 passengers and crew, only 764 survived. This traumatic event
propelled the United States into World War I, and served as a benchmark of
outrage that motivated everyone from statesmen to soldiers to go Over There.
‘The Sinking of the Lusitania’
Dir: Winsor McKay
Scr: Winsor McKay
Phot: Unknown
Premiere: July 20, 1918
12 min.
In
years since, the incident has become more ambiguous. The construction of the
ship in 1904 was financed by the British Admiralty, it was given powerful
engines and the capacity to be converted to war use. The British government has
been faulted by several historians for allowing the shipment of a substantial
amount of munitions— 4,200 crates of rifle ammunition, 51 tons of shrapnel
shells, and more — in the Lusitania’s
hold, which made it a legitimate target in German eyes caused a second explosion
that doomed the ship. It is asserted by a few that that the British government connived
to see the Lusitania sunk, precisely
to lure the U.S. into the war.
But
at the time, it was a genuine shock. It colored a Preparedness militancy
movement that was encouraged by the popular press. It swayed the American
public, which went from a majority for neutrality in 1914 to one for declaring
war only three years later, on April 6, 1917. American idealism was engaged.
This was the war to end all wars, which would make the world safe for
democracy.
It
touched people, one of whom as the cartoonist and pioneer animator Winsor
McCay. He was already well-known as the creator of iconic characters such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Gertie the Dinosaur.” He, with his assistants John
Fitzsimmons and Apthorp ‘Ap’ Adams began the laborious hand-work of drawing and
photographing the 25,000 images that make up this 12-minute narrative,
advertised as “Winsor McCay’s penpicture of the blackest crime of all history”.
As
the first dramatic animated film, it’s a hauntingly sublime account of the
facts as they were known at the time. Simultaneously, it’s inevitably a piece
of propaganda, “a historical record of the crime that shocked Humanity.”
As
we have seen before in McCay’s films, he is very open and inclusive about his
process, the sheer magnitude of which at the least makes it memorable. The
painstaking work of drawing one animation cel after another must have been
excruciating. (For some shots, McCay figured out how to make a set of
repeated-cycle background drawings against which he would draw objects in movement.)
We see McCay at his desk, as a “Mr. Beach” gives the details of the sinking. We
see his office, with stacks of paper and six assistants (none of whom are
Fitzsimmons or Adams). McCay’s ambitious attempt to render full animation as a
kind of documentary is treated almost as a stunt or magic trick.
The
film proper begins, and we see the Lusitania’s
four funnels and the distinctive, rakish set to the bow. It steams past the
Statue of Liberty as a curtain is drawn across the scene.
A
title reads: “Germany, which had already benumbed the world with its wholesale
killing, then sent its instrument of crime to perform a more treacherous and
cowardly offense.” Against ironically beautiful renderings of sea and sky, the
submarine looms into view had-on, then we see it surface in profile. It is so
well-drafted it almost looks rotoscoped
We
watch the intersecting trajectories of the liner and the submarine. Two fish do
a double take, then swim out of the way as the torpedo approaches the ship’s
hull. We see the explosion, the scattering of debris, gouts of smoke churning
up into the sky. It’s all very compelling. The smoke finally obscures the
screen . . .
Then
we are given a list of “men of world wide prominence” who were killed – writer Elbert
Hubbard, playwright Charles Klein, tycoon Alfred G. Vanderbuilt, producer Charles
Frohman. The smoke lifts again . . . “Germany, once a great and powerful
nation, had done a dastardly deed in a dastardly way.” A woman in the waves, as
in the background overloaded lifeboats descend. A swamped boat floats into
view.
The “second
torpedo” explosion is shown, making the Germans’ actions seem all more
despicable. The ship heels over to starboard and begins to sink by the bow. Suddenly,
hair-raisingly we can see small figures leaping, falling into the water, and it’s
visceral like 9/11, and I can smell what Ground Zero smelled like a week after that
attack. Then it becomes easier to imagine the feelings that prompted McCay to
make this picture.
The
morbid fascination that disasters inspire is at work here, in the masochistic
fascination with the agonies of death and destruction, the insistence on martyrhood,
the only way to make sense of it. “No warning was given – no mercy was shown,”
says the title. “The babe that clung to his mother’s breast cried out to the
world – TO AVENGE the most violent cruelty that was ever perpetrated upon an
unsuspecting and innocent people.”
Throughout,
McCay’s style is dark and severe. The looming hulls, the smoke that has a life
of its own, everything in the film has a sinister cast, miles away from McCay’s
usual sunny fantasies. Just to drive the message home, we see finally a mother
and baby sink to their deaths beneath the waves. The title blares, “The man who
fired the shot was decorated for it by the Kaiser! – AND YET THEY TELL US NOT
TO HATE THE HUN.”
Unfortunately,
it took McCay more than three years to complete the 12-minute project. The U.S.
was well into the war by the time the film debuted on July 20, 1918; the
conflict would end on November 11.
Historical
hindsight is what it is; emotional arguments are the strongest. Whatever else
it was, the sinking of the Lusitania was
a tragedy. In terms of film, it pushed the boundaries of what could be done,
and what could be pictured, outward. In the words of McCay biographer John
Canemaker, “. . . the film was a milestone in the demonstration of the
alternatives available to the creative animation filmmaker.”
The National Film Registry Project is one
writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry
in chronological order.
