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==Notes== ==Notes==

Revision as of 07:44, 18 August 2013

1912 American film
How a Mosquito Operates
A black-and-white film still. A giant mosquito plunges its proboscis into the side of a man's head. The man is lying down in bed, and has a horrified look in his open eye.How a Mosquito Operates (1912) by Winsor McCay
Directed byWinsor McCay
Distributed byVitagraph Studios
Release date
  • January 1912 (1912-01)
Running time6 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent with English intertitles

How a Mosquito Operates (1912), also known as The Story of a Mosquito, is a silent animated film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. The second of McCay's animated films, it is about a giant mosquito who torments a sleeping man. The short is one of the earliest examples of animation and is noted for the high technical quality of its naturalistic animation, considered far ahead of its contemporaries. In 1914 McCay followed this film with his best-known animated work, Gertie the Dinosaur.

McCay's reputation for the technical dexterity of his cartooning was displayed most famously in the children's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1911). Beginning in 1906, he displayed his abilities in chalk talks before live audiences on the vaudeville circuit. After seeing flip books that his son Bob brought home, McCay delved into the infant art of film animation. He finished his first film Little Nemo in 1911, and incorporated it into his vaudeville act. McCay followed Little Nemo's success with How a Mosquito Operates, in which a mosquito preys on a sleeping man; the mosquito's abdomen swells as it draws blood until it explodes. The technical quality of McCay's animation was unmatched until Walt Disney's feature films appeared in the 1930s.

Contents

How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

How a Mosquito Operates has also appeared under the title The Story of a Mosquito. It is one of the earliest examples of line-drawn animation. Inspired by the films of Charlie Chaplin, the film relies on physical, visual action—a strength of the film medium. It was released at a time when audience demand for animation outstripped the studios' ability to supply it. When most studios were struggling merely to make animation work, McCay showed a mastery of the medium and a sense of how to create believable motion.

Rather than merely expanding like a balloon, as the mosquito drinks, its abdomen fills consistent with its bodily structure in a naturalistic way. The mosquito has a personality: egotistical, persistent, and calculating (as when it whets its beak on a stone wheel). Although horrifying to watch, its actions are balanced with humor, as when it finds itself so engorged with blood that it must lie down.

Synopsis

A man looks around apprehensively before entering his room to go to sleep. A giant mosquito (with top hat and briefcase) flies in through a transom after it finds itself too large to squeeze through a keyhole. It feeds on the sleeping man, who tries in vain to shoo away his assailant. Eventually, the mosquito drinks itself so full that it explodes.

Background

A black-and-white photograph of a seated middle-aged, balding man in a suit and tie, head leaning lightly on his right hand
Winsor McCay had built a reputation for his drawing skills in his newspaper comic strips before pioneering in animation.

Winsor McCay (c. 1869–1934) developed prodigiously detailed and accurate drawing skills early in life. He earned a living as a young man drawing portraits and posters in dime museums, and attracted large crowds with his ability to draw quickly in public. McCay began working as a full-time newspaper illustrator in 1898, and began drawing comic strips in 1903. His greatest comic-strip success was the children's fantasy Little Nemo in Slumberland, which he launched in 1905. McCay began performing on the vaudeville circuit the following year, doing chalk talks—performances in which he drew in front of a live audience.

Inspired by the flip books his son Robert brought home, McCay "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons. He claimed that he "was the first man in the world to make animated cartoons", although he was preceded by animators such as James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl. McCay made four thousand drawings on rice paper for his first animated short, which starred his Little Nemo characters. The Little Nemo film debuted in movie theatres in 1911, and McCay soon incorporated it into his vaudeville act.

How a Mosquito Operates was McCay's second film. The animated sequences in Little Nemo had no plot; they were preceded with a live-action sequence where he bets with his colleagues that he can make his Nemo characters move. In the main sequence of How a Mosquito Operates, McCay does not appear. Since he had already demonstrated in his first film that pictures could be made to move, in the second he focuses on a simple story.

A black-and-white film still. A cartoon boy in a pointed cap stands on a flower. The drawings are in white on a black background.
French animator Émile Cohl made early experiments in animation. (Fantasmagorie, 1908)

Much like the early experiments by French animator Émile Cohl (1857–1938), McCay used the Nemo film to demonstrate the medium's capabilities (with fanciful sequences demonstrating motion for its own sake). In Mosquito McCay wanted greater believability, balancing outlandish action with naturalistic timing, motion, and weight: the heavier the mosquito becomes, the more difficulty it has keeping its balance. The animator gives character to the mosquito: it is egotistical, persistent and calculating.

McCay put the film together in December 1911, and released it in January 1912—first as part of his vaudeville act, and later in movie theaters. It was distributed abroad by Vitagraph Studios; in the United States, McCay showed the film as he toured his act in spring and summer. In a lost live-action prologue McCay and his daughter vacation at their summer home in New Jersey, where they "are pestered to death by mosquitoes". McCay finds a professor who speaks the insects' language, and who tells him to "make a series of drawings to illustrate just how the insect does its deadly work". Months later, McCay invites the professor to watch the film.

Vaudeville acts and humor magazines commonly joked about large New Jersey mosquitoes (known as "Jersey Skeeters"), and McCay had frequently used mosquitoes in his comic strip—including a story in Little Nemo where Nemo is attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes after returning from a trip to Mars. The idea for the film was taken from McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strip of June 5, 1909. In the original the mosquito (without top hat or briefcase) gorges itself on an alcoholic, becoming so drunk in the end that it cannot fly away.

Twenty-panel "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" comic strip The June 5, 1909, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strip upon which the film was based

Reception and legacy

John Randolph Bray's The Artist's Dream (1913) bore thematic resemblance to McCay's first two films, but Bray denied McCay's influence.

How a Mosquito Operates opened to large audiences, and was well received. The Detroit Times described audiences laughing until they cried, and " home feeling that had seen one of the best programs" in the theater's history. The paper called the film "a marvelous arrangement of colored drawings", referring to the final explosive sequence (which McCay had hand-painted red). The New York Morning Telegraph remarked, " moving pictures of his drawings have caused even film magnates to marvel at their cleverness and humor". McCay spoke in interviews of the new animated film medium's potential for "serious and educational work", hinting at the subject of his next film (1914's Gertie the Dinosaur).

Animator John Randolph Bray's first film, The Artist's Dream, appeared in 1913; it alternates live-action and animated sequences, and features a dog who explodes after eating too many sausages. Although these aspects are reminiscent of McCay's first two films, Bray said that he was unaware of McCay's films while working on The Artist's Dream.

Following Mosquito, animation tended to be story-based; for decades attention was rarely drawn to the technology underlying it, and live-action sequences became infrequent. The technical quality of McCay's animation was far ahead of its time, unmatched until the Disney studios gained prominence in the 1930s with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). McCay's biographer, animator John Canemaker, commended him for his ability to imbue a mosquito with character and personality.

See also


Notes

  1. Different accounts have given McCay's birth year as 1867, 1869, and 1871. His birth records are not extant.

References

  1. ^ Eagan 2010, p. 33. sfn error: no target: CITEREFEagan2010 (help)
  2. Berenbaum 2009, p. 138. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBerenbaum2009 (help)
  3. Dowd & Hignite 2006, p. 14. sfn error: no target: CITEREFDowdHignite2006 (help)
  4. Petersen 2010, p. 111. sfn error: no target: CITEREFPetersen2010 (help)
  5. Webster 2012, p. 11. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWebster2012 (help)
  6. Barrier 2003, p. 17 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFBarrier2003 (help); Dowd & Hignite 2006, p. 13 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFDowdHignite2006 (help).
  7. ^ Canemaker 2005, p. 167. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  8. ^ Canemaker 2005, p. 165. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  9. Canemaker 2005, p. 165 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help); Berenbaum 2009, p. 138 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFBerenbaum2009 (help); Telotte 2010, p. 54 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFTelotte2010 (help); Dowd & Hignite 2006, p. 13–14 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFDowdHignite2006 (help).
  10. Canemaker 2005, p. 22. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  11. Canemaker 2005, pp. 23–24. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  12. Canemaker 2005, pp. 38, 40, 43–44. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  13. Canemaker 2005, p. 47. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  14. Canemaker 2005, p. 60. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  15. Harvey 1994, p. 21 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFHarvey1994 (help); Hubbard 2012; Sabin 1993, p. 134 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFSabin1993 (help); Dover editors 1973, p. vii sfnm error: no target: CITEREFDover_editors1973 (help); Canwell 2009, p. 19 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFCanwell2009 (help).
  16. Canemaker 2005, p. 97. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  17. Canemaker 2005, pp. 131–132. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  18. Beckerman 2003 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFBeckerman2003 (help); Canemaker 2005, p. 157 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help).
  19. ^ Canemaker 2005, p. 157. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  20. ^ Canemaker 2005, p. 160. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  21. Wood 2012, pp. 23–24. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWood2012 (help)
  22. Theisen 1933, p. 84.
  23. Bendazzi 1994, p. 16. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBendazzi1994 (help)
  24. Barrier 2003, p. 10. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBarrier2003 (help)
  25. Canemaker 2005, pp. 164–165. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  26. Canemaker 2005, p. 164. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  27. Eagan 2010, p. 33 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFEagan2010 (help); Canemaker 2005, p. 167 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help).
  28. Canemaker 2005, pp. 167–168. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help)
  29. Barrier 2003, p. 12. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBarrier2003 (help)
  30. Wood 2012, p. 24. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWood2012 (help)
  31. Webster 2012, p. 11 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFWebster2012 (help); Canemaker 2005, p. 167 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFCanemaker2005 (help).

Works cited

External links

Winsor McCay
Comic strips
Films
Adaptations
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