Gertie the Dinosaur

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.

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.

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

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.