How a Mosquito Operates

Previous to animator Winsor McCay's January 1912 release of "How A Mosquito Operates,' film animation shorts were made up of a series of simple line drawings of nondescript objects or forms of people morphing into alternate shapes. One exception was McCay's 1911's "Little Nemo," where the New York Herald/New York American newspaper comic strip artist had produced the first cartoon of a character gleaned from his "Little Nemo In Slumberland" work. "Little Nemo" showcased the Nemo character going through a series of movements.

His "How a Mosquito Operates" takes an episode from his comic strip "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" and personalized a mosquito in his quest for drawing blood out of a human. This became cinema's first cartoon that reflects a personality where an insect adopts human traits in its pursuit for a never-ending source of blood nutriments.

McCay made 6,000 drawings on rice paper for this six-minute film. The artist relied on simple black-on-white etchings without a concern for background details. Cel animation, which would make backgrounds fully realized, would come later. To save time and lengthen the time of the movie, McCay looped his drawings in repeated action in several spots.

McCay must have had a heart attack when, during a raging snowstorm in December when he finished all his drawings for the cartoon, he hired a driver in a horse-drawn cab carriage to take his work to Vitagraph Studios to laboriously photograph the etchings onto film. The taxi never arrived at the New York City studios and disappeared for a few days. City police informed McCay after a heart-wrenching wait they found the taxi with all his drawings, untouched, inside the cab with the horses detached from the carriage three miles away. The bundle of drawings took McCay nine months of meticulous work.

Front-ending "How A Mosquito Operates" cartoon, now lost, was similar to "Little Nemo," a live-action sequence where McCay and his daughter are pestered by mosquitos at their New Jersey summer home. They seek out a college professor who speaks insect language, who tells them to draw how the mosquito does his work on humans. The animation we see is the one McCay shows the professor for his interpretation.

Animation historian John Canemaker once rightfully pointed out that HOW A MOSQUITO OPERATES is a milestone in the development of so-called "personality animation." Rather than the surreal metamorphosis parades which characterize the animated movies of the 1900s, HOW A MOSQUITO OPERATES puts two defined personalities in conflict: a gluttonous, arrogant, but crafty mosquito and his anxious human quarry. The film has aged very well since the gags are weird and morbid. However, if mosquitoes squick you out, then you might want to avoid this short-- the mosquito ain't designed like Jiminy Cricket!

Mosquitoes are a bane to everyone. This little 1012 piece shows us the workings of just such a little bugger. He set his sights on a big guy who is trying to sleep. He is patient and enterprising. But he gorges himself and the results are pretty interesting. A reasonably good little film, astounding for the time in cinema history.

Like all of Winsor McKay's cartoons, this little mosquito fable uses his incredible artistic talent to its fullest and contains a surprising amount of wit for such a simple, short subject. Like his newspaper cartoons, McKay's animated films are distinctive in their art and humor, but the animated films are especially interesting because they lie at the very root of cartoons. Gags that are still being used today appear in this little gem. The collected works that contains Mosquito provides an amazing insight into a brand new art form that had unbounded possibilities in the early 1900s, possibilities that arguably are still unfolding today.

Several thoughts came to mind after watching this early animated film about a hungry mosquito. First, it's striking to consider that this was made just six years after J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and four years after Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie-the first landmark works in animation history. Yet in that short time, the quality of animated films had already improved significantly. How a Mosquito Operates feels surprisingly advanced and even shares some of the atmosphere found in Steamboat Willie (1928), the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Second, while the animation shows clear progress, the film still bears some of the theatrical influence that defined early cinema. The events are relatable-most people have experienced the irritation of a mosquito-but they're presented in an exaggerated, imaginative way. This mosquito wears a hat, carries a suitcase, sharpens its stinger, and bites with absurd depth to highlight the discomfort it causes. It's an excellent example of the transitional period in animation, where realism and fantasy were still vying for dominance in storytelling.

Third, there seems to be an educational or metaphorical layer. From what I gather, the man in the film has been drinking heavily, and the mosquito-also "drinking" to excess-suffers dire consequences. It's a clever parallel and a surprisingly powerful message. That said, the film could have been a bit shorter. The final part, which really leans into this metaphor, feels unnecessarily long and starts to drag.