The NFR Project #37: Animation takes off -- 'Gertie the Dinosaur' (1914)

Gertie the Dinosaur

Dir: Winsor McCay

Prod: Winsor McCay

Scr: Winsor McCay

Phot: Unknown

Premiere: Interactive, Feb. 8, 1914; Screen only, after Nov. 1, 1914

13:51

Winsor McCay wasn’t the first film animator, but he was the first great one. He moved with ease from illustration to cartooning to moviemaking, setting aesthetic and technical standards all along the way.

He rode the wave of popularity of the first-generation newspaper “funnies,” and his Little Nemo in Slumberland was proto-surreal, a wildly imaginative comic strip that still marks an apex of artistry. His work seemed destined to be adapted for film, despite its patent impossibilities. Edwin S. Porter had directed a live-action adaptation of McCay’s Dreamof a Rarebit Fiend in 1906.

Meanwhile, animated film had commenced in the hands of early practitioners such as J. Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl. In 1911, McCayproduced some animated footage of his LittleNemo characters and used in conjunction with his vaudeville act – a logical extension of his early “chalk talks,” in which he would sketch and perform live on stage.

Narration had been done with magic-lantern shows for decades before, some with moving parts that prefigured full animation, but McCay was the first to unite separate mediums, making to-dimensional creatures that he could “play” with in person. McCay’s next animated short, How a Mosquito Operates, was derided for trickery, with viewers claiming that McCay traced or manipulated a dummy to achieve his lifelike drawing effect. McCay then determined to animate something next that could not have been photographed.

Enter the dinosaur. Although they had been discussed in popular culture for decades, speculative visuals of them didn’t take off until the turn of the 20^th century, as museums began to display their skeletons and artists began to try to imagine what they looked like. The American Museum of Natural History’s “brontosaurus” skeleton, installed in 1905, inspired McCay. He drew 10,000 images to bring Gertie to life for approximately seven minutes.

As with Little Nemo, McCay crafted the Gertie footage as material to be incorporated into his vaudeville act. The simple but charming scene shows us an somewhat anthropomorphized, roly-poly, sassy, childish and playful creature who responds to commands, gets distracted, misbehaves, and finally pulls its creator onto the screen for a ride. The smooth jump between the real and unreal will come back again and again in films from Sherlock Jr. to the Purple Rose of Cairo.

Unfortunately for McCay, he had a contract with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who didn’t like McCay’s theatrical freelancing. Thwarted from performing, McCay shot eight minutes of live framing footage for Gertie, contextualizing the creation of the dinosaur as a bet McCay has with other animators that he can do it (a bit lifted from the earlier Nemo short).

While creating Gertie, McCay coined many foundational animation techniques. He used registration marks to keep the frame stable; he repeated sequences as needed to save labor, a process known as “looping”; and he invented key-framing, in which an animator draws the significant points and poses of action in a sequence, and then “in-betweens” the intervening drawings to bridge those vital points.

The most significant advance here of course is that an animated character is invested with personality. With that, it becomes an entity with which the audience can identify, that can bear the weight of a narrative.

The NFR Project is an attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry, in chronological order. Next time: In the Land of the Head Hunters.’

The NFR Project #40: 'The Perils of Pauline' (1914)

The Perils of Pauline

Dir: Louis J. Gasnier, Donald MacKenzie

Prod: N/A

Scr: Charles W. Goddard and Basil Dickey

Phot: Arthur C. Miller

Premiere: March 23, 1914

410 min. original; surviving version, 199 min.

The idea of an episodic series is not new. Dickens, Tolstoy, and many other 19^th-century writers published serially, building up a literate middle class in the process. When film adapted the idea, the result was nearly 50 years of once-a-week adventures that satisfied a faithful, mostly young public – until television wrested the form away.

The film serial was a byproduct of one of the first examples of transmedia storytelling. Two years before The Perils of Pauline, the first American film serial, What Happened to Mary, was released to theaters in 12 weekly chapters, in sync with the same story being published in The Ladies’ World magazine. The story was performed as stage play as well, and published as a novel.

The serial took time to assume its “cliff-hanger” form. The Adventures of Kathlyn in 1913 first introduced the concept, but it’s not to be found in Pauline. Instead, each episode is self-contained (and therefore interchangeable, a boon to exhibitors). The shooting style in unimaginative, functional – a stark contrast to the much more inventive camera of French filmmaker Feuillade’s Fantomas serial of the previous year.

The spring of the plot is that Pauline is a young heiress whose uncle has died, leaving his conniving secretary in charge. The secretary controls the inheritance until Pauline marries, or if she dies . . . As nice as it would be to see Pauline as a proto-feminist figure, we are a long way from Laura Croft here. Despite Pauline’s spunky and assertive persona, in each episode she is the damsel in distress. She can get herself into trouble, but rarely out of it. The emotional payoff for the audience is, of course, the hook of melodrama – the last-minute rescue, the triumph of virtue. It’s the mechanical tension-and-release component of narrative and game-play, repeated weekly. Addictive.

The series was so popular that it was expanded from 13 episodes to 20 while still in production. Pauline made a star of Pearl White, a spunky comic actress who did her own stunts. She went on to make 11 serials over the course of the next 10 years. When she retired, she had saved $2 million, and spent the rest of her life in Paris.

Other clichés of the serial were in the air, but not in The Perils of Pauline. The heroine tied to the railroad tracks surfaced in1913 in Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life; attempting to bisect the hero or heroine in a lumber mill with a big circular saw blade originated in the 1890 stage melodrama Blue Jeans, and crept into many serials.

The version of Pauline that exists is less than half its original length, a nine-reel version salvaged from French archives, saddled with badly translated intertitles. (At least it’s viewable – The Exploits of Elaine, from the same year and also starring White, can  be found on the National Film Registry but not in general circulation.)

An odd sidelight to this film’s story is how it frames the career of Spencer Gordon Bennet. This is Bennett’s first film credit, billed as assistant director and as a miscellaneous performer. A fast and competent worker, he wound up making more serials than any other director (over 100), eventually becoming known in Hollywood as “The Serial King.” He directed the last one, Blazing the Overland Trail¸ in 1956. His tombstone reads: “His Final Chapter.”

The NFR Project is an attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry, in chronological order. Next time: an early cliffhanger, ‘Gertie the Dinosaur.’

20 modern horror films -- personal faves

Michael Powell's Peeping Tom -- obsession and damage.

Last year, when I wrote a list of old-school horror filmfaves for Westword, I made a note to myself to continue that list, starting at the pivot from the ‘50s into the ‘60s when Peeping Tom and Psycho changed the horror film forever.

If the list looks odd (why In the Mouth of Madness and not Halloween? Where is Psycho and Last House on the Left, Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, Re-Animator, Dead Alive, Aliens, Scream, Evil Dead, etc.?), it’s because I restricted it to my personal favorites instead of hitting the points of general consensus and historical significance.

In this I am guided largely by my aversion to gore and hyperviolence onscreen. It is what it is, and I have soldiered manfully through many films even though they turned my stomach because they were brilliant – Dead Ringers and Society come to mind – but it’s not stuff I would run through again if I had the chance. I have little use for giallo, and much of Miike, Argento, Fulci, Roth and the like is lost on me.

A pretty odd dilemma for a horror-film fan, so perhaps these suggestions will help if, like me, you are a confirmed between-finger-peeker. Whether you might term some of these thrillers, or fantasies, or sci-fi, it’s all the same in result. These films scare the beejeesus out of me.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Dir: Jack Arnold

1957

It all begins here for me – the first first-person monster movie, and in that a major step forward. Typical guy Scott Carey (the underrated Grant Williams) is exposed to some kind of radioactive cloud while out on his boat – and he starts shrinking. He’s our narrator as well, and the story ties the viewer’s empathy squarely to Carey, who becomes a heroic figure even as his ability to register in “our” world vanishes. His final statement of self-affirmation, too, is remarkable.

Horror of Dracula (Dracula)

Dir: Terence Fisher

1958

The first and to date only successful reboot of the Universal monster cycles begins here, in the beautiful Bray Studios of Hammer Films, in London. (The Curse of Frankenstein precedes it, but this film has a lot more resonance to it, doesn’t seem like a forced remake, as Curse sometimes does.) Three of Hammer’s horror stars, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Michael Gough are here in a Technicolor reimaging of the Count as a rather more suave and commanding figure, with plenty of toothsome young actresses to bite. Soon the studio would churn out dozens of outlandish, scary titles we loved to watch.

Peeping Tom

Dir: Michael Powell

1960

A mind-bending experience, very similar to Hitchcock’s Psycho, and released just before it. Something was in the air. For my money, Peeping Tom is vastly more frightening. Photographer Mark Lewis likes to take pictures of attractive women – as they watch while he kills them. The multilayered tale was so disturbing that it derailed Powell’s (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) career. The key is that the villain is portrayed as a victim, and the examination between desire and aggression, control and submission, the confused complicities of the audience, and the very nature of “making a picture” as an art form are all put into play here. Still an extremely uncomfortable movie to sit through.

The Innocents

Dir: Jack Clayton

1961

The best adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw is a point-of-view tour de force. Is the governess (Deborah Kerr) nuts, or are perverse ghosts infecting her charges’ minds? After watching a dozen times, I still can’t decide. “It was only the wind, my dear.” WAAAH!

The Haunting

Dir: Robert Wise

1963

Another great am-I-losing-it-or-did-I-just-see-something movie. (Robert Wise could make a great film in any genre, and almost did them all.) A psychic investigation goes wrong – a simple premise, but it’s played out with a patient sense of menace, with a rhythm that imperceptibly pulls you into the feelings and mental distortions of the protagonists.

The Masque of the Red Death

Dir: Roger Corman

1964

Corman’s Poe adaptation cycle is wonderful, even given the lack of budget and time spent on them. He and screenwriter Richard Matheson (who also gave us I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, and other seminal sci-fi and horror texts) created an exciting, odd, claustrophobic world usually presided over by the inimitable Vincent Price, that transmits the spirit if not the precise sense of Poe’s works. Here, as an out-and-out Satan worshipper, Price is at his most unrepentantly sadistic.

Kwaidan

Dir: Masaki Kobayashi

1965

A stylistically vibrant quartet of ghost stories. The horror anthology film originated with Dead of Night in 1945, and studios such as Britain’s Amicus made a ton of money from them – but this is the best. As beautiful as it is terrifying.

Planet of the Vampires

Dir: Mario Bava

1965

Ridiculous, campy fun from the inventive Italian director. The title says it all, and an all-star cast (who reportedly couldn’t understand each other) fight the bloodsuckers in extremely stylized costumes and surroundings that proved influential for films such as Alien.

Seconds

Dir: John Frankenheimer

1966

What if you could live all over again, young and healthy, with all the knowledge and experience you’ve gained? That’s the Faustian premise of this deadpan piece of paranoia. It’s about the horror of having your dream come true, a particularly American problem.

Don’t Look Now

Dir: Nicolas Roeg

1973

It’s a harrowing film about loss, memory, identity, fate, and communication. Set in a wildly edited world of flashback and flashforwards, a couple grieving the death of their child try to put their lives back together. It’s a heart-rending view, and Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are great in it.

The Wicker Man

Dir: Robin Hardy

1973

The idea that there is an older, more powerful religion underneath the trappings and niceties of current theologies is a constant in fantastic fiction. It’s the vision of it out in the open, relaxed and unashamed of its realities – and necessities – that’s so disturbing here. Everybody on Summerisle is in on what’s happening save for the crusading Sergeant Howie and the audience. That calm progression towards the unthinkable at the film’s end is a soul-crushing experience.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

Dir: Nicolas Gessner

1976

Rynn Jacobs is 13, and lives with her father. But nobody seems to have met him. Is everything all right? In the hands of Jodie Foster, Rynn is just fine – until a snooping neighbor and her pedophile son (an impossibly creepy Martin Sheen) start poking around. This horror classic is also an introvert’s fantasy – everything’s fine, just leave me alone!

The Howling

Dir: Joe Dante

1981

Certainly the jauntiest werewolf movie ever made, it’s witty, chockful of references to all things lycanthropic, rips along at a lovely pace, and includes some of SFX/makeup creator Rob Bottin’s best work, all of it pre-CGI, of course.

The Lair of the White Worm

Dir: Ken Russell

1988

There is a tinge of horror underlying every movie the flamboyant and provocative Russell made, a disconnect with reality that defines all his main characters. In truth his The Devils, a film still largely unfindable in the United States in its original cut, is more disturbing. Still, this Bram Stoker adaptation is blasphemous, ridiculous, gratuitously gory, and very enjoyable.

Lady in White

Dir: Frank LaLoggia

1988

Death and disaster invade Norman Rockwell country, as an old murder comes to light and sympathetic characters are found to have disturbing pasts. This beautifully filmed ghost story is balanced between poles of light and darkness.

In the Mouth of Madness

Dir: John Carpenter

1996

Carpenter’s contributions to horror are limitless, having created the template of the slasher film with Halloween, and gems such as They Live and Escape from New York. His ‘apocalypse trilogy’ of The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and this film created an imaginary universe in which doom was unavoidable, nothing was trustworthy, and meaning drained away into a sinkhole of despair and annihilation. Sounds like a hoot, no? Madness goes furthest in asserting the transience of the veneer of consensual reality, and the fragility of the human mind.

Sleepy Hollow

Dir: Tim Burton

1999

Though Tim Burton is seen as the natural inheritor of the Gothic sensibilities of American cinema, he’s made surprisingly few straight horror films. This comes closest. Though it’s an adaptation of the classic Washington Irving tale, it’s full of Burton’s steampunk sensibilities, and references to other horror greats such as Bava and Fisher. The control of the in-studio shooting makes this one of the best art-directed modern horror films.

eXistenZ

Dir: David Cronenberg

2000

Cronenberg has done more for modern horror than anyone on this list. The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly . . . and on and on. Centered firmly on body horror, Cronenberg manifests all the cultural dislocations of our time in the bodies of his protagonists, literally pulling them into strange new shapes, obliterating their consciousnesses, submitting them to the will of a brutal new order. Here, he mixes the unreal and real so thoroughly that the film is a nightmare in itself, a deadly locked room from which no one can escape.

Tideland

Dir: Terry Gilliam

2005

Death and madness are the high points of this jarring exploration of abandonment. A young girl loses her father and mother and, trapped in the middle of nowhere, falls into relationships with more damaged souls. A terrifying, dark poem set in bleached Texas sunlight.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Dir: Guillermo del Toro

2006

The present master of horror has many great movies to his credit, but this is his most magical. It’s a fatalistic fairy tale, and connects to the horrors of everyday life – Spain in 1944 – strongly enough to make its meanings clear. Del Toro’s vision gives palpable heft and believability to his most extreme imaginings – as though he were showing us real species heretofore undescribed.