What to expect
Gertie is a landmark of personality animation: weight, hesitation, appetite, and mischief make a drawn creature appear to think between commands. The film also preserves animation’s early life as a live performance act.
How to ease in
The introductory live-action material sets up McCay’s wager; Gertie is the performance. Watch the pauses before she obeys, because character appears most clearly in the delay.
Heads-up
A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes dated live-performance framing and animal-command comedy.
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Gertie becomes lovable at the exact point she stops behaving like a demonstration. I wait for the tiny pauses in which a technical achievement seems to develop preferences of its own.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Sources for the facts
Where to go next
Want a gentler, shorter, or stranger next film? Ask Momo for something like this →
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