Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
In a live-action prologue, cartoonist Winsor McCay bets his colleagues he can bring a dinosaur to life; the film then turns to Gertie, who lumbers from her cave to eat trees, drink a lake dry, heave a mammoth into the water, and obey her creator's commands.
One of the earliest animated films and the first built around an appealing cartoon personality, Gertie the Dinosaur grew out of McCay’s vaudeville act, in which he stood beside the screen appearing to give the beast live commands; it was named to the National Film Registry in 1991.
Background
Winsor McCay, already famous for his newspaper strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, drew thousands of individual pictures for this film, a huge amount of work for such a short film. He first performed it on the vaudeville stage, standing beside the screen and giving Gertie commands as though she could hear him. The film released to cinemas kept a live-action opening in which McCay’s colleagues, including the cartoonists George McManus and Tad Dorgan, take part in the bet.
What to watch for
Gertie is one of the first animated characters with a distinct personality: she sulks when scolded, cries when hurt and tosses a mammoth into the lake. That was new at the time, when most animation was a novelty of moving lines. McCay also introduced techniques that later animators depended on, such as registration marks to keep drawings aligned. The Library of Congress selected the film for the National Film Registry in 1991. Watch how Gertie’s movements are weighted and how she interacts with the world around her.
