Donald Crafton
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By: University Of Chicago Press
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
Chronicle of a much forgotten time. 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.
There was once a time when the utterance "Mickey Mouse" had no meaning and conjured up no images of vast tracts of decadent land saturated with sugary amusement. The word "Felix", however, would probably send a jolt through most living in this lost time. Just how popular Felix was is evident in a 1926 photograph of Ligget's Drug Store in Grand Central Station that Crafton included in "Before Mickey." The window is nearly filled to the brim with Felix paraphenalia, much like we've seen recently with the Powerpuff Girls, Spongebob Squarepants and Harry Potter. Felix was once just as ubiquitous and just as unavoidable.The events that led up to this incredible success are laid out in "Before Mickey." The saga of animation is an interesting and much neglected part of cinema history. The book covers something that is almost never discussed: animation's origins in stop-motion. Everyone should read Crafton's account of "The Haunted Hotel" - a stop-motion film where objects "float" through the air and objects move on their own. It terrified audiences and gave impendance to animation with its success. From this it was almost a natural progression to drawings that moved and funny characters in funny situations.
Silent animation had its own life and own method of communicating. Everything was in the pictures, and early animation artists made the most of this. It remains, and will probably sadly remain, a very underappreciated art form. We're just too drunk with sound these days.
Luckily, you can read this book and get a taste of what those days must have been like, the stories of the pioneers that made it all possible (those in America, at least) and how far we've come in some respects and what we've lost in others.
Anyone interested in the early history of animation should read this(after all, there isn't much else out there right now). Also, if you can, buy the tape (is it available on DVD now?) that accompanies the book. It's filled with great animation but sadly missing "The Haunted Hotel." It does, however, include a GREAT Felix the Cat cartoon.
Editorial Review:
This witty and fascinating study reminds us that there was animation before Disney: about thirty years of creativity and experimentation flourishing in such extraordinary work as Girdie the Dinosaur and Felix the Cat. Before Mickey, the first and only in-depth history of animation from 1898-1928, includes accounts of mechanical ingenuity, marketing and art. Crafton is equally adept at explaining techniques of sketching and camera work, evoking characteristic styles of such pioneering animators as Winsor McCay and Ladislas Starevitch, placing work in its social and economic context, and unraveling the aesthetic impact of specific cartoons. "Before Mickey's scholarship is quite lively and its descriptions are evocative and often funny. The history of animation coexisted with that of live-action film but has never been given as much attention."--Tim Hunter, New York Times
