Review of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) by Adam F — 15 Apr 2013

"Gertie the Dinosaur" is a short combination of live action and animation that still holds up even after nearly a hundred years. The short film starts off as a comedic silent film about our hero Windsor McCay that bets to one of his friends that he can "bring a dinosaurus to life" using thousands of drawings.

We then see the short animated segment (about 5 mins or so) of McCay, who hand drew thousands of frames, interracting with "Gertie". He introduces her to the audience and gets her to perform tricks and show off a bit, she interracts with other prehistoric creatures and misbehaves more than once.

The animation is well done, with details added in, like Gertie's chest moving while she breathes and clumps of dirt falling from the rocks she picks up. Compared to the animated films of the time, this one is pretty groundbreaking.

The characters stay consistently on-model (so no distortions despite the movement that they make), it looks very professional (despite the fact that only two people worked on it, McCay and his assistant John A.

Fitzsimmons who helped with the backgrounds) and McCay convincingly interracting with the film. It's quite funny and there's even charm in the fact that the dinosaur is totally inaccurate and some of the creatures we see interact with "Gertie" are completely fictious (the 4-winged lizard for example).

If you're a fan of animation, a fan of dinosaurs or you're just curious and want to see what one of the earliest animated films looks like, check it out; most of the original footage can be found on Dvd (or on some public domain websites) and you can get a pretty good feel of what the show would have been like thanks to McCay's son Robert and Disney animator Richard Huerner.

(Dvd, April 1, 2013).