An early 1920s animated satire of movie-making? I thought I had a home-run right there, but unfortunately Tony Sarg's 'The Original Movie (1922)' is something of a disappointment, despite its strengths, failing almost entirely to engage me. This is one of only three surviving episodes from the series of short animated films, "Tony Sarg's Almanac (1921-23)," which traced modern life back to the Stone Age, where things really weren't all that different. The style of animation uses relatively simple silhouettes, most readily identifiable with Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch's 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926),' though it had been used earlier in a 1915-1916 American series called "Silhouette Fantasies." The style is also notable in that it calls to mind the magic lantern technology that predated movies; this is very appropriate for a film that concerns itself, however jokingly, with the birth of cinema. Sarg also acknowledged the influence of Chinese shadow puppetry in his animation, an ancient art that goes back centuries.
'The Original Movie' opens, rather cleverly, with a flashback to Eadweard Muybridge's motion photography experiments with horses, ostensibly the birth of film-making as we know it. However, this notion is swiftly dismissed, and, via an even longer flashback, we are brought back to the Stone Age which, aside from the production company name, Stonehenge Film Company, could just as easily be set in modern times. From here, I didn't find all that much interest in the subsequent proceedings. Sarg's animation is very static, lingering on the single shot for considerable periods of time, and the film under production {bafflyingly titled "Who's the Goat?"} doesn't offer much in the way of creativity. I did, however, get a chuckle from the very ending, when the film's original writer thanks to the division-of-labour production system already in Hollywood at the time doesn't even recognise the product of his efforts. Overall, there's mild interest in this short animated comedy, but the opportunity for cinematic satire was largely squandered something like 'Sherlock Jr. (1924)' would be much more worthwhile.
'The Original Movie' opens, rather cleverly, with a flashback to Eadweard Muybridge's motion photography experiments with horses, ostensibly the birth of film-making as we know it. However, this notion is swiftly dismissed, and, via an even longer flashback, we are brought back to the Stone Age which, aside from the production company name, Stonehenge Film Company, could just as easily be set in modern times. From here, I didn't find all that much interest in the subsequent proceedings. Sarg's animation is very static, lingering on the single shot for considerable periods of time, and the film under production {bafflyingly titled "Who's the Goat?"} doesn't offer much in the way of creativity. I did, however, get a chuckle from the very ending, when the film's original writer thanks to the division-of-labour production system already in Hollywood at the time doesn't even recognise the product of his efforts. Overall, there's mild interest in this short animated comedy, but the opportunity for cinematic satire was largely squandered something like 'Sherlock Jr. (1924)' would be much more worthwhile.
