A classic

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list, I was quite eager to check it out. It was quite a milestone since it is the oldest animated feature film (there were actually two older Argentinian animated features but they were lost). Well, even though it is now almost 100 years old, visually speaking, it is still quite impressive and it is surprising that nobody tried to emulate this style later on. It was also pretty neat to see a silent feature with a soundtrack which really did fit the action on the screen (on a regular basis, with such silent movies, the music feels really random but that’s what you get when you try to watch for free some cheap-*ss movies on YouTube). Concerning the story, even though it was just a little bit more than 1 hour, an awful lot did happen and it was at times slightly confusing and hard to follow everything. It’s the tricky thing with such silent features, your mind tends to wander off easily and, if you are tired (which was fortunately not the case when I watched this flick), you might doze off fairly easily. It was also the downside with this animation, once again, it was beautiful but, as a result, most of the characters, especially the good guys, seemed faceless and expressionless. At the end of the day, you do spend the whole duration looking at some shadows, no more, no less, and even though it is an intriguing prospect, you might wonder if a short feature wouldn’t be more suitable for this. Anyway, to conclude, there is no doubt that there is something quite magical about this movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in motion picture history like I am.

7/10