Before Mickey

by Donald Crafton, Otto Messmer (Foreword)

Before Mickey Mouse came along in 1928, Felix the Cat prowled the screen. This is the first book to trace the prehistory of animation - zoetrope, flipbooks, and vaudeville "lightning sketches" - and to chronicle the achievements of Emil Cohl, the first animator, and Felix's creator Otto Mesmer, among others. Before Mickey 's fast-moving narrative will appeal to readers with a general interest in film history. And its documentary material covering artistic, commercial, and technological developments in the United States and Europe will prove invaluable to animation specialists. Crafton makes use of over 100 illustrations, including enlarged film frames, reproductions of advertisements, and pictures of innovative techniques and devices.

Donald Crafton, Associate Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and Curator of the Yale Film Collection, has also prepared a video cassette of 25 rare cartoons to be used with or independently of his book. This cassette is available from The MIT Press in UHS, Beta 2, and U-Matic formats.

Genres: History, Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In

437 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Gijs Grob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being written in 1982, still in the early days of animation history, Crafton's book still is the definitive guide to the silent era of animation. His book is particularly insightful on the earliest animation experiments, the works of Stuart J. Blackton, Émile Cohl and Winsor McCay. Crafton not only describes, but also interprets the earliest history of animation, and shows the development of themes and tropes over the years. He also discards all pre-cinema animation as non-relevant - a little too easily, in my opinion. Indeed, in his 1993 afterword he admits, he may have been a little too rigorous. Nice is Crafton's attention for European animation, even if this chapter remains a littlebit sketchy. Crafton clearly has more problems describing the process of industrialization of animation, and the development of the animated cartoon. His chapters on these subjects are rather incoherent, and close to boring summaries of names and dates. In the end, the chapters on Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Walter Lantz leave something to be desired. The last chapter on Felix the Cat, on the other hand, is one of the book's highlights, and shows why Felix the Cat is so important. In all, Crafton's book is a good introduction, but it's clear that more research into this field still is very welcome.

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely fabulous book. Fabulous because Crafton writes the first history of silent animation, important because he writes it so well, important because the book is so deeply and widely researched, and important because Crafton does not impose a theory on the material but lets his research shape the several narratives covered in his several chapters. This is academic and film writing the way it ought to be.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exhaustive study of animated film from before 1928 ( the introduction of Mickey Mouse and sound). I found it fascinating. I grew up with many of these cartoons, but now, I am afraid, you'd be hard pressed to find them outside of a special on TCM or an animated film festival. That is too bad as these films were far superior (even the earliest) than the trash put out by the likes of Hanna-Barbera.

[Craven Lovelace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I expected this book to be dry and, yes, boring. It was anything but. I found it to be one of the best accounts of the early days of the animation industry that I've read and really served to bring those years alive for me. It also taught me more than I had known before about what was happening with animation in other countries besides the U.S. in those nascent days. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Robert Laing · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent illucidation of the people, studios, and material basis which combined to produce some of the earliest examples of cinematic animation. The scope of the book is large, geographically as well as temporally, and that is perhaps its one weakness. As in most good historical books, the author has set the "scene" in which his particular narrative of events is to take place, with some early pages dedicated to the trailblazers of the nascent animation medium such as Emile Reynaud, Winsor McCay, Emile Cohl, and others. However, the focus shifts to the birth and growth of the American studio animation system, and for me, that was where I found the essential heart of the book.

Essentially, I like this book a lot. I think it does follow through on the promise of its title, and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in media history. But, since animation is still a rather new focus for scholarly work, I find a lot of scholarly writing on the topic suffers slightly from a lack of focus on any particular area (or too much focus on one particular individual to the detriment of others *ahem* Disney...). So yeah, this book is one of the few I've found which talks about early animation pioneers, which is great, but the focus of this book imo is not on them, but on the American studio system which developed out of, or even parallel to, the techniques of these individuals.

[Tonk82 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probablemente el mejor tratado sobre animación cinematográfica que he leído pre-mickey mouse. Una época difícil de seguir, muy caótica, y muy poco estudiada de forma seria.

Muchas imágenes de los cortos y películas, historias de los diferentes estudios y animadores, y todo francamente entretenido de leer.

[Jim]

Sounds Interesting!!!!

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early Animation such as Blackton, Cohl, Felix, McCay, Bray, textbook for Animation Hist (Arts Coll 3XX?)

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a bit to get into this one, but if you like animation and history, it's absolutely fascinating.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enh.