Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House

Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House (1921)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The third "Rarebit" film that Winsor McCay would make in 1921, this one here has a wife eating rarebit and of course having a bad dream that night. In the dream her husband gets tired of their high mortgage and land taxes so he decides to make their house fly so that they can save money. For the rest of the film we see the two flying around in their house trying to find a cheap and safe place to live. I think the idea behind this film was much better than the actual execution. There's no doubt that the animation is top-notch as McCay never had a problem getting interesting visuals on the screen. There are many great ones here including the entire bit where the house takes off and begins to fly over various locations so that the husband can find one he likes. There's also some very good stuff in outer space that looks terrific. With that said, the majority of what we see just doesn't have any sort of emotion behind it. There's really no laughs, no drama or anything else. Everything is pretty much flat in regards to any type of entertainment coming from the actual story. McCay fans will probably still want to watch it but there's no question that it doesn't rank among his best films.

"The Flying House" is a creative and interesting feature from Winsor McCay's 'Rarebit Fiend' series. It has a little less outright comedy than some of his other features, but it is an intriguing movie in a couple of other respects. Most particularly, the dream sequence here is much more of a story than are the dream sequences in the other surviving features from the series. More than that, it's an interesting dream that follows a very believable 'dream logic' of its own.

The dream in this one has a man responding to the threats of a mortgage company with a most unusual plan that could only work in a dream. But rather than simply use the idea of "The Flying House" for a few laughs, McCay takes it through a series of episodic events that recreate pretty well the strange chains of events that happen in our dreams. It really adds some interest, even beyond the opportunity to see McCay's usual creative details and skillful animation.

This is one of the coolest early animations I have seen and probably the most enjoyable here in the 21st century of all the McCay films. Unlike his early LITTLE NEMO and GERTIE cartoons, this one is 100% animated and have marvelous animation and exquisite backgrounds. Sure, it's black and white and is a silent film, but for its time it was a terrific film--one that is about as good as you can find at that time.

Like the other "Rarebit" films from McCay Studios, this film just goes to show you that the recent commercial about cheese IS correct--"Behold the power of cheese"! All feature people eating cheese and then having bizarre dreams. This flying house one is just amazing and a lot of fun. The lady who partook of the cheese dreams that her husband uses his genius to make their house fly!! And, after buzzing around the Earth for a while, the house leaves orbit and heads out to space--being highly reminiscent of the Georges Méliès film LE VOYAGE DANS LE LUNE. A wonderful and timeless piece of history--not to be missed.

This movie is definitely the most impressive looking one out of the 'Dream of the Rarebit Fiend' animated movies, by Winsor McCay. It's also the longest one and overall it's just far more detailed and stylized looking.

The movie looks as if it had an entire animating team behind it but it all got hand drawn by Winsor McCay and with help of his son Robert Winsor McCay. This is of course a great accomplishment, especially when you look at how well the movie is looking. Winsor McCay definitely improved his animation techniques, when you compare this to the very first 'Dream of the Rarebit Fiend' movie "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet", which is from the same year.

Unlike the other 'Dream of the Rarebit Fiend', this movie features text balloons, for the characters their dialog. It makes the movie a more involving one to watch and also adds to the movie its pace.

It's a quite imaginative movie, that takes us to all kind of strange and unlikely places, with the flying house and its two inhabitants. Lots of stuff is happening, so boring is the last thing you can call this movie. It's all quite entertaining to watch but above all things the movie remains impressive visually, when you consider its age and time it got done in. Animated movies weren't a mainstream thing exactly in the 1920's and Winsor McCay was truly a pioneer in that area, though not the pioneer he claimed he was, by calling himself the inventor of animated drawing, which just wasn't the truth at all.

A real impressive, early, short animated movie.

8/10

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