The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
An animated reconstruction of the May 7, 1915 attack, tracing the German U-boat's torpedo across the water, the two explosions, and the eighteen minutes in which the liner rolled over and went down with nearly 1,200 aboard.
Winsor McCay drew this film’s roughly twenty-five-thousand frames largely by himself over two years, producing what is generally called the first animated documentary and a landmark in treating the medium as a vehicle for serious argument. It was selected for the National Film Registry.
Background
The Sinking of the Lusitania is a 1918 animated short by Winsor McCay, who drew most of its frames himself over a long production period. It is generally called the first animated documentary, using animation to present a historical event and to argue a point rather than to entertain. The film reconstructs the May 7, 1915 attack on the British liner by a German U-boat, in which nearly 1,200 people died. McCay made it during the First World War, when the sinking was a major source of public anger in the United States. The film was selected for the National Film Registry.
What to watch for
Look for the path of the torpedo across the water, the two explosions, and the gradual tilt of the liner as it goes under. McCay draws the ship and sea with plain, clear lines, which keeps the sequence easy to follow even though it is a drawn reconstruction. The film gives its attention to the scale of the loss rather than to dramatic spectacle, and it compresses the eighteen minutes of the sinking into a short running time. Notice how the animated format makes the order of events legible in a way that was difficult for 1918 newsreels to show, since the event itself had not been filmed.
