Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

This film is highly reminiscent of some of the films by Georges Méliès because of the film's extensive use of trick cinematography--an art perfected by Méliès before the director of this film got his start. In fact, the Méliès short THE UNTAMABLE WHISKERS (1904) is an awful lot like this film except instead of just having cartoons come to life due to stop-motion, this earlier film features Georges Méliès himself interacting with the drawings. Both are pretty antiquated by today's standards, but because they are short and pretty creative, they are also both very watchable. This J. Stuart Blackton film isn't quite as good or innovative, but this shouldn't stop you from giving it a look on google video.

And here I am. Still reviewing some key examples of early animation on celluloid. Today, I decided to focus on another more recognized work from film genius James Stuart Blackton, the renowned Father of Animation, which I find much more elaborated, but equally effective, than his previous work on animation: the remarkable "The Enchanted Drawing".

"Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" not only is as captivating as the aforementioned film, but it also nearly surpasses it, especially considering the creativity that Blackton put in the drawings, in which new techniques already used still shine in this one, such as cut-out and stop-motion, this time used in a more natural and fluid way, helping to bring a new level of realism to their creations.

As if that were not enough, this time we do not see Blackton in person, but only his hands, giving the drawings the absolute protagonism.

The effort and dedication that was put to make this short is indeed admirable, besides being a meaningful contribution to the development of animation in film, in a time when it was developed slowly, until it became what we know today.

I, of course, like this animated short that J. Stuart Blackton created and it is spectacular, but I have one question about this short. The one question is when J. Stuart Blackton, the artist in the film, is drawing the characters' sequences with a chalk bit-by-bit, I do not know how the drawings move, like when the guy with a mustache is drawn beside a woman, he smokes. Now, I do not get that particular part of the animated short.

Of course, I love this film because there were silly cartoon drawings and it was one of the early special effects in film history, but The Enchanted Drawing, made in November 1900, was, I believe, the first animated film with special effects.

8/10

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)

*** (out of 4)

When viewing this animated short people must remember that it was made even before D.W. Griffith started making pictures! This three minute film basically has chalk drawings coming to life in front of our eyes. The animation technology certainly grew as time went along but I can't see how anyone could watch this and not be impressed with what they were doing. The trick photography is really impressive and I also thought the drawings were extremely good. I really liked the first man and woman and how the man's smoke was used to cover up the woman. This is certainly a very early use of animation and it looks extremely well.

This is an historically little classic from early movie-maker J. Stuart Blackton.

It's always interesting to watch a movie that is over- or near 100 years old. Movie-making obviously was still a profession yet in development which let to some many experimental little productions. This movie is one of those early experimental movies, that for one of the first times ever shows us a couple of fully moving animated characters, that also interact with each other.

Of course nothing really happens in this movie. It's just merely used as a medium to show off the skills- and possibilities of this new genre. The movie features a couple of animated persons that get drawn by J. Stuart Blackton himself. The characters interact simply to each other. It doesn't make this movie very entertaining to watch, although the bit with the dog and clown was pretty amusingly done.

The animations themselves are good and the speed is more than great. All of the movements feel right and natural. A real big accomplishment.

It's hard to rate a thing like this. It obviously is a little piece of early movie history and is simply a must-see because its widely regarded as the first ever animated movie. But the movie itself is hardly interesting or amusing enough to watch. Nothing really happens and thank goodness that the movie doesn't run over 3 minutes. I therefor go with a safe six out of ten.

6/10

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