User reviews

Often erroneously touted as the first animation film ever made (J. Stuart Blackton's 'An Enchanted Drawing' of 1900 takes that title, at least in America), Gertie the Dinosaur remains, to this day, a charming example of early animation. The live-action segments bookending the animation scenes involve a group of real-life animators portraying themselves, as one of them, Winsor McCay, bets George McManus that he can make a "Dinosaurus" live again by a series of hand-drawn cartoons.

Six months – and ten thousand hand-drawn cartoons – later, McCay is ready to show off his hand-made creation. During dinner, McCay introduces his young, playful female Apatosaurus (?) named Gertie. She emerges somewhat tentatively from her cave, before proceeding to swallow a rock and then an entire tree. As McCay gives her instructions from off-screen, Gertie attempts to follow them, though her endless enthusiasm for mischief often leads her master to scold her. Gertie's playful persona is further explored when Jumbo, a passing Woolly Mammoth, threatens to steal her limelight. Though warned not to hurt the little creature, Gertie doesn't hesitate in picking up poor Jumbo by the tail and hurling him into the lake.

McCay's vision of a dinosaur – allegedly the first time that one had appeared on film – is a little scientifically shaky (I don't expect any dinosaurs to have been able to dance on their hind legs for any prolonged period of time), but I'm more than willing to forgive this in such an early film. What is a Woolly Mammoth doing back then, you may even find yourself asking? The trick is to completely shut out what we all know more than ninety years later, and to just appreciate what a stunning achievement this piece of animation actually was.

Just as the film explicitly states, the animation of Gertie required about ten thousand hand-drawn images (by both McCay and his assistant, John A. Fitzsimmons, who traced the backgrounds), which they inked on rice paper and mounted on cardboard. In the film, it took McCay six months. But, we might ask, shouldn't he have wagered something a little more valuable than just a single dinner? George got off easy, I say!

Winsor McCay was a William Randolph Heart-owned newspaper cartoonist who possessed a passion for animated films. His 1911 "Little Nemo" and 1912 "How A Mosquito Operates" entertained movie lovers and established new techniques in the field. McCay's next effort proved even more groundbreaking: February 1914's "Gertie the Dinosaur."

McCay realized how time consuming it was to produce a moving cartoon. With John Bray's introduction of backgrounds to animation films, he realized he would have to step up his game. McCay hired an assistant to draw and retrace the stationary backgrounds on each piece of rice paper while he concentrated on the moving images. During the course of etching a total of 10,000 paintings for his six-minute movie, McCay devised several innovations in animation. Inspired by extinct humongous creatures walking the earth millions of years earlier, he created the first animated dinosaur. To make sure his prints with the drawn backgrounds would align perfectly for each film frame photographed, McCay invented registration marks placed on the four corners of each drawing. He also pioneered what later was called the "McCay Split System. " McCay decided to draw the major moves of Gertie and the other creatures in the film, to which he would later fill in the subtle progressive movements from Point A to Point B. To save time and to extend the length of his film, he incorporated the technique he used in "Mosquito," the "cycle of drawings," which was a sequence of prints that would repeat a particular movement several times.

McCay designed "Gertie the Dinosaur" to be part of his vaudeville act showcasing his speed drawing. These performances were proving to be very popular and becoming a good source of income for him. McCay intended to interact with the projected cartoon, giving instructions to Gertie, who would obediently follow them.

Even though McCay was creating his animation movies and staging his acts during his spare time, Hearst was flustered at his cartoonist spending so much time on his sideline hobby instead of concentrating on his New York American newspaper job. Hearst set strict limits on McCay's acts to the point where he couldn't perform outside of New York City. Film producer William Fox approached McCay to finance and distribute a live-action prologue to the cartoon for a longer 14-minute movie. McCay agreed and the picture was released for theater showings later in 1914.

Because of the realism displayed in "Gertie the Dinosaur" and the personality reflected in the drawn animal, McCay's animated film proved to become a huge Influence for later animators. Walt Disney would use the live action combination with a cartoon later in the next decade. The commercial success of McCay's work proved to early film animators the viability of financial profits to this artistic medium. Gertie's historical track record was so impactful that a canvass of 1,000 animation professionals voted McCay's pioneering movie as the #6 Greatest Cartoon of All-Time.

Winsor McCay's skill, wit, and creativity are all quite apparent when watching his pioneering animation feature "Gertie the Dinosaur", which is also an enjoyable and sometimes enchanting little movie in its own right.

The format is similar to an earlier feature in which McCay introduced his animated versions of the Little Nemo characters. The footage featuring "Gertie" is prefaced by a mini-story suggesting how the idea for her arose, and then comes the highlight, the animation starring the engaging dinosaur herself. The combination of McCay's imaginative images, and the fascination of dinosaurs in themselves, makes it quite enjoyable.

The animation is extremely good for such an early effort. McCay already had the knack for drawing interesting figures, and in moving pictures such as this one he made sure to include little details that add extra interest. This feature also shows some good story-telling, as a number of times Gertie's antics effectively play off of audience expectations. Her interaction with McCay also works very well, and the whole feature is a very enjoyable piece of cinema and animation history.

Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur", is an early animation masterpiece that I believe can be enjoyed by both extreme animation buffs, and the average casual viewer. On different levels of course. The average viewer would see a pleasant little film about a baby like dinosaur showing off for us. An animation fanatic like me would see a lot more. For the time it was made, the animation is fantastic. It's leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I have seen from that time. The detail is sharp, the movements are smooth, and the backgrounds, all hand drawn frame by frame, are vivid and hardly shake at all. I overheard someone mentioning during the class break that he could see an early use of rotoscoping when "McCay" walks onto the screen. The guy was mistaken. Rotoscoping wasn't invented until the 1930's. This is a testament to McCay's artistry: to make characters so life-like that people still think today that they are real.

That previous statement was in reference to McCay's realistic drawing style. However, it could also be applied to the character of Gertie. She is very believable as a real "person." We come to like Gertie and her child-like antics, understanding her needs to be the focus of attention. I liked the way Gertie tried to hog the screen from Jumbo, first by throwing him into the lake, then by hurtling a rock at him. This of course shows us Gertie's infantile character, but, going back to the artwork, is also a perfect example of McKay's mastery of smooth animated movement. All said, this is probably one of the key films in the transition from cartoon characters just being moving drawings to being characters that we can understand and care about.

While it is not the first hand-drawn animation film ever made, it's definitely the best among them and the first to feature a dinosaur.

PLOT: In a live-action sequence, cartoonist and movie director Winsor McCay and a few of his friends enter a museum where the skeleton of a dinosaur is displayed. He takes a bet with one of his pals that he can make the dinosaur live again. After six months of hard labor, hand-drawing over 10,000 cartoons, he is ready to introduce Gertie. At a dinner, after drawing an inanimate dinosaur on a large board, he tears the paper off and displays the backgrounds where Gertie lives. Then he asks the creature to come out and starts interacting with her.

THE GOOD:

• Details. So much attention has been placed in the duration of the movements, the rhythm of breathing, and the shifting of the weight that it looks natural. Gertie even interacts with the background and other animals in such a surprisingly realistic way that the audience can feel the depth in the creature's surroundings.

• The premise. The original way Gertie is introduced to live-action people is clever and gives the whole movie a purpose.

• The clumsy guy. The gag of the guy falling with this huge heap of cartoons was inevitable. One can only imagine the extra labour to sort them all back in the right order.

THE BAD:

• Some movement sequences can be repetitive and boring, but considering it was still done decades later in so many cartoons, this one is not so bad after all.

ACCOLADES:

• Added to the National Film Registry in 1991.

• #6 in the list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals

VERDICT: This early in the film industry, the animation process had to be experimented because there was very few previous productions to document it. Considering the technology of the time and the effort necessary to create such an animation, this movie is an incredible achievement and an absolute milestone in that field. The quality of the animation even surpasses some of the stuff I saw on TV back in the sixties.

Winsor McCay did a great many things of which he could be justifiably proud, but I think Gertie the Dinosaur ranks at the top of that lengthy list of accomplishments and I suspect McCay may have felt the same way, for it is still remarkable all these years later. Gertie is more life-like than some people I know! Funny, believable, touching and fascinating, sometimes all at once. This is one of the cornerstones of modern animation and also succeeds on its own terms and merits as both art and entertainment. Winsor McCay grew unhappy and somewhat disgruntled and disillusioned as animation became, in his eyes, more commercial and less artistically inclined. I've often wondered what McCay would have made of the independents, such as Will Vinton and Bill Plympton, among others, and the different forms, like Claymation and the stop-motion work of George Pal and others. I hope he would be pleased with at least some of the work done in the last 90 or so years. An absolute gem. If you haven't seen Gertie, I envy you for the treat you have in store. She's a delight. Well worth getting. Most highly recommended.

'Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)' is a short film that features some highly impressive early animation. Its first movement is live-action and involves the film's animator betting his friend that he can make a dinosaur live again. At an expensive lunch, the animator shows off his work. The live-action stuff is a bit dry, but it does a decent job of setting up the animation and isn't particularly boring, either. Apparently, the animator originally performed a live routine alongside screenings of the piece, which would be really cool to be able to see somehow. The picture itself features intertitles that tell you what he's supposed to be saying to the eponymous dinosaur, but it's clear that this was designed as a live experience and it's a shame there isn't any footage, to my knowledge, of one of its original showings. The animation on display here is generally incredible. McCay is clearly a pioneer of the process and he certainly knows what he's doing. Some of the motion is insanely fluid and pretty much all of it has a believable dimensionality to it (Gertie looks almost '3D' despite being flat on every frame). It's great stuff overall. However, occasionally it's a bit ropey. Several motions are repeated by playing the animation forwards and then immediately running it backwards, before repeating the process and letting it play forwards for longer when the filmmaker wants to move past the moment. This seems to be an effort to lengthen the overall sequence without having to draw more time-consuming frames. It's a little disorienting because the motion is only timed to work in one direction (forwards) and any reverse footage just looks a bit cheap. Still, it seems that each frame had to be drawn on a single sheet of paper, which means the entire background had to be redrawn on every frame. That must have taken an incredible amount of skill and patience. In general, the short must have been quite the undertaking. It looks effortless, but - as I know from first hand experience as an animator - it really isn't. The animation industry owes a huge debt to seminal works such as this. Plus, it's still pretty entertaining. 7/10.

This is an odd little film featuring Winsor McCay--the creator of Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo. And, just as in his first Little Nemo film, much of this film features Winsor McCay with his friends (all animators and lovers of animation) and only in the second half do you get to see Gertie. Ostensively, the film is about a bet Winsor made with his friends that he can make a dinosaur come to life--and he does in the form of a short cartoon featuring the lovable character "Gertie". While Gertie is very crude and simple compared to later color cartoons, there is still a lot of charm in the character and the film is a wonderful time capsule. Of great importance to Cinephiles and lovers of early animation.

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Winsor McCay film starts off very much like his first as McCay and a friend are inside a dinosaur exhibit when the artist says he could make them walk. The friend and others at a local club laugh at him so he makes a bet that he can bring a dinosaur to life. A month later McCay displays Gertie, a lovable dinosaur who will do whatever he says. I will admit that the start of this film is a tad bit slow because we've already seen this same opening in an earlier film. With that said, there's no question that this is a very important film and one that is a must see. The most amazing thing to me about this film is how much life McCay is able to give Gertie. There's not a single frame where you feel as if you're watching a bit of animation because the director does such a nice job at bringing her to life and making her seem so real. The animation includes Gertie doing various tricks, a dance and a few other things but we also get a sea serpent that shows up. The animation looks incredibly strong and we're given some great humor throughout. I hate using the word cute but that's exactly what this film is and it's so impressive that even those who can't stand older movies should be drawn into it.

The cartoonist, Winsor McCay, brings the Dinosaurus back to life in the figure of his latest creation, Gertie the Dinosaur.

McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay's employer William Randolph Hearst later curtailed McCay's vaudeville activities, so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release.

Animation historian Donald Crafton called Gertie "the enduring masterpiece of pre-Disney animation". And that about sums it up. The film is relatively simple, and if used live is a pretty basic gimmick. But i bet it worked to impress audiences. If they had never seen a cartoon before 9and they probably had not), this would be quite the treat.

Probably the first cartoon featuring a dinosaur - a hand-drawn depiction of Gertie, a brontosaur brought to life by animation .

A harmless and adorable dinosaur, perfect to introduce kids to the world of dinosaurs.

Grade A

Cinema's first look at dinosaurs has all the creativity that anyone could want. Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" is a simple but funny short. I first saw the cartoon in a documentary about the history of animation. McCay stood in front of an audience and explained what he was about to do. Then the playful reptile made her grand entrance. It shows what one can do with animation. It is, after all, simply another form of filmmaking. Since then, animation has ranged from the soft and cute (the Silly Symphonies) to the mordant (Ralph Bakshi's "Fritz the Cat").

You have to see "Gertie the Dinosaur", if for no other reason except to get a look at early animation. A masterpiece.

This groundbreaking effort is not only a curiosity; it is also a clever, imaginative film. Probably the best known piece of early animation, it involves a minor bet among a group of animators who find themselves at the Museum of Natural History in New York. When they see a dinosaur (they call a dinosaurus--a brontosaurus--although that name is now passé), one of them bets he can bring the dinosaur to life, using animation. The bet for a dinner is accepted and off goes the animator, doing thousands of drawing and creating a truly memorable dinosaur, full of personality and fun. Of course, the main characters are only line drawings on a sketchy setting, it works marvelously. Gertie proves to be petulant and uncooperative at times but, ultimately performs her tricks. I had never seen this film before and am quite impressed with the accomplishment.

Credited with featuring the first-ever instance of animation on celluloid, this one's place in movie history is thus forever assured; yet, that alone hardly makes it eligible for a place on polls compiling the all-time best films (which is the main reason I got round to watching it)! Incidentally, the on-screen title here is actually "Winsor McCay: America's Greatest Cartoonist and Gertie" – with editions of it available online running anywhere between 6 (cutting to the chase, as it were, by eliminating the live-action bookends and showing only the prehistoric action involving the "dinosuarus") and 14 minutes (including expository footage of N.Y.C.'s Museum of Natural History)!

The 'plot' revolves around a bet made by McCay to his once equally illustrious friends that he can 'breathe life' anew into a gigantic ancient fossil; the group is completely won over (and, needless to say, so was the general public of the time) by his achievement – which was considerable, given that he states it took some 10,000 sketches to fully execute! The primitive drawings – understandable for a century-old pioneering effort, yet perfectly fitting in view of the subject matter – still have a certain charm to them, particularly in conveying Gertie's unruly behaviour; special effects are then incorporated into the finale, where McCay is seen 'riding' his own creation!

This short and rather old cartoon about a dinosaur is quite enjoyable. It was one of the earlier cartoons, and one of the first dinosaur movies. It may also have introduced cartoon violence to the world; Gertie chucks a mammoth named Jumbo into the ocean. I have found that it is more fun to watch the original silent version than the one with sound, although others may disagree.

Before Gamera, before, Godzilla, before Mighty Joe Young, before King Kong. And way before, the Pink Panther, Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, there was a dinosaur named Gertie. She was the first cartoon character and the first movie monster. Audience were thrilled when she appeared on screen as if people saw King Kong and laughed at her silly antics as if they saw Mickey Mouse's silly antics. It is basically started out as a bet and Windsor McCay won the bet. The movie is such an admirable landmark milestone in animation history, there was an ice-cream stand in honor of the dinosaur at Disney MGM Studios (now called Disney Hollywood Studios) in Florida. She made a cameo appearance in the comic book adaptation of "Dinosaurs Attack" and the movie LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND (1991). The cartoon got referenced in an episode of ENCYCLOPEDIA where the dinosaur was designed and animated by Joey Ahlbum. In a world where classic cartoon characters are making a comeback for the new generation, I think it is time for Gertie to make a comeback don't you think? Give the cartoon a watch, it is pure family fun. Not rated, but a "G" would be nice.

The "conceptual mother" of every character in animation after it. This is how I define this extravagant creation of Winsor McCay, another great animator from the beginnings of cinema.

Originally used as a vaudeville act, the short in fact, is quite enjoyable that way, with a Winsor acting as a circus tamer and giving orders to his creature to do tricks (all with on-screen cards). The funny thing is, obviously, that it is not a lion or a bear, or anything like that, but instead the titular female sauropod, which as indicated by the tag-lines "(she) lived millions of years before man inhabited this earth". In other words, an already extinct animal, now alive thanks to the hands of McCay. Gertie is probably the first animated character with a distinctive personality: childish, playful, a kind of a "rebel". And she immediately wins over the audience. Several animated characters that would come after would adapt many of these characteristics; in this case, as it is the first example in this area, it gives the short film a fitting sense of innocence.

What follows is a routine of tricks, with great moments such as the interactions with the mammoth (poor "Jumbo"!), or the exaggerated but funny "drink" Gertie enjoys. At the visual level, there is a fluid mobility of both Gertie and the other creatures that appear, even those with a few seconds on-screen, but other details like the the earth and rocks that tremble as the giant animal walks through are well put and carefully added.

The prologue and epilogue with McCay and other animators like George McManus is also entertaining, but the former can feel stretched a little long before the main act.

A true animated classic, as awesome and still amusing after all these years.

Another unique offering which will create mirth wherever it is exhibited. In this film George McManus bets Windsor McCay on a trip which they take through the Museum of Natural History, that he cannot, as per McCay's boast, draw a picture of the mammoth Dinosarus and make it live again. McCay wins the bet, and the result of his work as presented by the Box Office Attraction Co. is one of the most entertaining examples of the animated cartoon ever presented. - The Moving Picture World, January 9, 1915

Gertie is touted as being one of the first animated films and for its place in cinema history I decided to watch it. Having seen many very ordinary films from the first decade or so of silent film (trains pulling into stations etc) it was fun to see a sense of creativity here. The animator enters a museum and gets into a bet that he can bring a dinosaur to life with his drawing. This he does with the creation of Gertie the Dinosaur and it is not long before he is interacting with her, giving her instructions and, ultimately, entering the frame to ride on her. In a period where even the ordinary was viewed with wonder, it is something to have the creativity to not just animate a dinosaur but do so in a way that sees interaction with real life and in particular see real life enter the film in a way that is perhaps normal a century later – but not then.

In terms of the actual film, it is less good than its historical value but is still quite fun. The dinosaur animation is basic for sure, but for me what made the difference was that it is pretty static and repetitive at times – with lots of the dinosaur repeating actions and rocking in a manner that seemed looped. Specific episodes with an elephant and with the creator himself were stronger and offered more, but they were still built around these sections. Perhaps it was because I had just watched a very creative and energetic short film from the same sort of period and this seemed very static next to it.

So, not as great as a film to just watch, but it is pretty entertaining and watching it within a historical context will enhance what you are watching.