How a Mosquito Operates

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.

How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

*** (out of 4)

Winsor McCay film has an overweight man being followed home by a mosquito but things just get worse as the man tries to go to bed. Once in the bed the mosquito begins to attack him in order to get his blood. HOW A MOSQUITO OPERATES isn't a pure masterpiece or anything like that but you can't help but be entertained by his good nature and charm. I think my favorite bits are when the mosquito is having to come up with clever ways to stick the man who after a couple previous times decided to get up under the covers. The animation is extremely good and this includes a sequence where we see the mosquito sticking the man and drawing out the blood. The scene where the mosquito sticks the man's nose is quite painful to watch but it really brings the film to life. What struck me most about the film is the way it's animated but McCay is able to make everything appear so real that you're drawn into the film just like it was live action. The animation looks incredibly good and the two characters are likable in their own way.

Okay, this one is really tough to rate and review. Let´s start by acknowledge why it´s great, important, and good. Winsor McCay is one of the pioneers of animation. Without him and work like this short, animation would not be where it is today. Surely another like him would emerge eventually, but here we are. The animation is cool to look at and McCay clearly had a style to his drawings, but I most say I find the short too long for what it is. It´s repetitive and it´s nature is a bit in east and west. I´m personally not a fan and wont revisit it anytime soon but acknowledging the importance might make you feel different about it.

A hungry mosquito sucks the blood of a sleeping man.

The animation is simple but looks really nice. It has a style to it that I can´t tell was intentionally scary or looks exactly like McCay wanted it. It´s a really nightmarish looking animation that is pure nightmarefuel. The mosquito looks scary enough, but the man looks so horrifying. This is not helped by the over-the-top actions of the mosquito that makes the act of sucking blood look so extreme and unpleasant. Again, I have no idea if that was the intentional feelings McCay wanted to Conway, but here we are.

While the animation has a style to it it´s still really primitive and there is so much repetition to what happens. The mosquito dose the same action three or four times in a row and for a short that is 6 minutes it feels so much longer because of it. While it looks and works fine, I think it could have conveyed what it wanted in less runtime. There just isn't a lot to it and the primitive nature hasn't aged it well. I forgive it for the primitive state though since it was groundbreaking for the time.

The music is also a bit tone shifting all throughout. It´s also disturbing yet triumphant when the mosquito gets´s to suck blood and I'm not sure if it´s the hero of villain of the story.

While once again, I´ll acknowledge the importance of McCay´s work it´s not something I´m drawn too. I find it too scary, simple, repetitive and while groundbreaking for it´s time, it´s a bit lackluster and not that impactful today. While it´s fine I find it a bit to boring to really want to watch it again.

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.

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.