Watch Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania, the First Main Animated Propaganda Movie (1918)

You may know Win­sor McCay (1867? ‑1934) for the gor­geous­ly sur­re­al Lit­tle Nemo com­ic strip or for his ear­ly ani­mat­ed brief Ger­tie the Dinosaur (1914). However do you know that he additionally cre­at­ed a number of the ear­li­est examination­ples of ani­mat­ed professional­pa­gan­da ever?

On Could 7, 1915, the RMS Lusi­ta­nia was simply off the coast of Ire­land, head­ing in the direction of its des­ti­na­tion of Liv­er­pool, when a Ger­man U‑boat attacked the ship with­out warn­ing. Eigh­teen min­utes after two tor­pe­does slammed into the ship, it was beneath water. 1,198 died. The furor over the inci­dent even­tu­al­ly led to the Unit­ed States enter­ing WWI.

On the time of the sink­ing, McCay was employed by William Ran­dolph Hearst as an edi­to­r­i­al automobile­toon­ist. Although McCay was incensed by the assault, Hearst was an iso­la­tion­ist and demand­ed that he draw anti-war automobile­toons. This grat­ed on the artist an increasing number of till last­ly he decid­ed to fol­low up on his large­ly suc­cess­ful Ger­tie the Dinosaur by mak­ing The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia (1918), which you’ll see above.

The film took two years of painstak­ing effort to make and con­sist­ed of over 25,000 drawings—all completed by hand and most completed by McCay him­self dur­ing his free time after work.

Com­pared to oth­er ani­ma­tion completed round this time, the movie is each stark and seri­ous, lend­ing it the air of a doc­u­males­tary. The piece, which isn’t a lot brief­er than the actu­al time it took for the Lusi­ta­nia to sink, provides a blow-by-blow account of the assault. Although the inci­dent is depict­ed massive­ly from afar, as if from a cam­period on anoth­er ship, McCay doesn’t draw back from present­ing some actual­ly gut-wrench­ing moments of the tragedy up shut. At one level, there’s a shot of a des­per­ate moth­er attempt­ing to maintain her child above the waves. At anoth­er level, dozens of peo­ple are seen bob­bing within the chop­py seas like drift­wooden.

And, simply in case you haven’t fairly grasped the thrust of the movie, McCay consists of some inter­ti­tles, that are, even by the stan­dards of warfare professional­pa­gan­da, pret­ty heavy-hand­ed.

The babe that clung to his mom’s breast cried out to the world – TO AVENGE essentially the most vio­lent cru­el­ty that was ever per­pe­trat­ed upon an unsus­pect­ing and inno­cent peo­ple.

And

The person who fired the shot was dec­o­rat­ed for it by the Kaiser! – AND YET THEY TELL US NOT TO HATE THE HUN.

The curi­ous factor in regards to the film, con­sid­er­ing its sub­ject mat­ter, is how beau­ti­ful it’s. Simply take a look at the styl­ized traces of the ocean, the baroque arabesques of the smoke com­ing off the ship’s smoke­stacks, the ele­gant use of neg­a­tive house. Each cel of the film is wor­thy of get­ting framed. What number of warfare professional­pa­gan­da films are you able to say that about?

Yow will discover The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia within the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Films On-line: Nice Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Observe: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our web site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Actual Time (1915)

Watch Win­sor McCay’s Lit­tle Nemo and Ger­tie the Dinosaur, and Wit­ness the Beginning of Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion (1911–1914)

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Professional­pa­gan­da Automotive­toons Dur­ing World Warfare II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Film Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a author and movie­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wooden Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.