How a Mosquito Operates

The animation is fairly simple compared with most of Winsor McCay's later animated movies, but nevertheless this is a humorously offbeat feature - at least, that is, as long as you don't have any phobias about mosquitoes.

The simple story shows a mosquito tracking a prospective meal, and then getting down to work. The mosquito is cleverly drawn, and the story features a couple of pretty good, if slightly morbid, gags. Later on, McCay began to fill his features with a wealth of background detail, which is missing here, and as a result it is fairly plain-looking at times. But for such an early effort, it's made pretty well, and is worth seeing.

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.

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.

Okay, I'll admit this isn't the greatest cartoon ever made. It's silent, consists only of simple pencil drawings and never is all that interesting. So why is it STILL a worthwhile film? Well, it's so early and in its day it was considered state of the art. Plus, the film's creator, Winsor McCay, was responsible for some of the first animated heroes--in the forms of Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo. So, because of this very important and impressive pedigree, this film is of great importance to animators, historians and Cinephiles alike. For what it is (an early experimental film), it is pretty good. Plus, without films like this, later more fleshed out cartoons wouldn't have been possible. Interesting and unique, that's for sure.

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.