Winsor McCay
The Master Edition
By Chris Hyde
June 28, 2004
The entire film output of one of animation’s greatest pioneers goes digital in Milestone’s new Winsor McCay: The Master Edition.
While the great artist Winsor McCay was not - as he was often known to claim - the inventor of the animated film, he was undoubtedly its first real genius. Though one certainly doesn’t wish to disparage the brilliant contributions of early animators like James Stuart Blackton or Emile Cohl, none of these contemporary groundbreakers raised the level of the art in the manner that McCay did. For this man was to make films of a kind that would not be equaled for many years after he had stopped creating cinema, leaving a body of work that even today possesses a strange and potent vibrancy.
As a young man, McCay got some of his first real commercial experience as an artist for dime store museums and traveling circuses, developing his technique amongst the extravagant fancies of the late 19th century entertainment circuit. Developing a facility for quick drawing and a knack for the outlandish, by the time the new century dawned, this unique creative talent was positioned perfectly to leave his mark on two just emerging media. In one - the comic strip - McCay would prove himself to be arguably the greatest practitioner ever to grace the pages of American daily newspapers. The other lasting contribution that the artist would make was to the world of the animated cartoon, creating a number of short films between 1911 and 1921 that advanced the cinematic technique at the same time as they were attaining a breathtaking apex of skill that some would say remains unmatched to this day.
McCay’s earliest work consists of a number of cartoons that were hand drawn on rice paper, among them the famous shorts Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Also in this vein is the 1912 How A Mosquito Operates, an at times grotesque picture of a jaunty insect with an appetite for human blood. While all of these innovative films are of course primitive compared to the refined animation that today’s CGI sated audiences are used to, these revolutionary pieces of cartoon art display the filmmaker’s dazzling technique and far-flung imagination in a most fitting fashion. McCay’s drawings possess an amazing sense of life and weight, and their play with perspective and motion far surpass any animated films from the same period. Filled with sly humor and incredible craftsmanship, these initial shorts are in some ways the finest creations of the artist’s spectacular career — for though they lack a sophisticated edge, their charming air and the stunning expertise with which they are executed marks them as some of the most extraordinary hand drawn movies ever made.
At some point around 1915 or so, the artist began experiment with animation drawn on cels, the industry technique that would eventually come to dominate the media. McCay’s films from this point on would lose a bit of the striking verve that the earlier work possesses, and as there were still many technical details to be worked out with this style, the cartoons that follow are at times a bit clumsy. But that doesn’t at all keep them from being remarkable pieces of art - and in movies like The Centaurs (available only in fragmentary form), Bug Vaudeville, The Flying House and The Pet the animator continues to extend the range of his hand drawn films into brand new territory. What these shorts lose in graphic exuberance they gain in creative finesse, and their more refined nature allows the animator to come up with new tricks to show off his magnificent facility for cinematic drafting. The Pet is an especially well done item, and the story (closely associated with McCay’s newspaper strip Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend) of an out-of-control creature lets the filmmaker’s sense of the fantastic reach truly hilarious heights.
Of all the films from McCay’s unparalleled output, there was only one that was based on real-life events. This single exception to the filmmaker’s dreamlike oeuvre is the 1918 The Sinking of the Lusitania, a bit of anti-German propaganda inspired by that country’s unsavory submarine sinking of a passenger liner. In many ways, this is the short on this disk that most retains its original power; the jawdropping beauty of the artwork in this masterpiece is simply still a wonder to behold many decades after its theatrical premiere. This one definitely has to rank as one of the most outstanding pieces of animation to ever grace the silver screen, and the pathos and drama evoked by McCay’s expressive telling of the tragic tale continue to resonate on down through the years.
History would have been quite well served if Milestone had merely collected all of the surviving films from the career of the most talented of animation trailblazers, but this new Master’s Edition goes a little further than that. Along with the nice new digital transfers for all of the shorts, the DVD includes an 18-minute 1976 documentary called Remembering Winsor McCay that sketches the filmmaker’s biography via interviews with a man who did many of the background drawings for the animator’s earliest works. Also included here are audio commentaries for each one of the McCay films by cartoon historian John Canemaker. While these tracks are sometimes slightly stodgy, Canemaker provides much valuable insight into the life of McCay and the importance of his cinematic labors. His careful scholarship and command of the material at hand lends a professional edge to his remarks, and the information contained herein is bound to give viewers a richer understanding of the milieu in which Winsor McCay’s unique talent arose and flourished.
The final extra donated by Mr. Canemaker to this special DVD is a number of photo stills from his personal collection, which only help to flesh out the subject of the disk even more. This entire release is at last a perfectly just tribute to one of the top artists to ever toil in the arena of the animated film, one whose singular career helped to start a celluloid genre that continues right on up through the likes of Shrek 2 and The Invisibles in the summer of 2004. Though today’s movie audiences are often known for their lack of historical knowledge and the blind eye that they generally turn towards those who have preceded the entertainments they gobble up at the megaplex, it’s hoped from this corner that this wonderful new digital disk of one of animation’s pioneering masters will pique a renewed interest in these films among contemporary fans. And since without this incomparable genius the art of animation may never have reached the apotheosis at which it finds itself today, Winsor McCay most richly deserves to be remembered by all.
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