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11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Almost 90 years later, it still works., 30 November 2002
10/10
Author: Robert Reynolds (minniemato@hotmail.com) from Tucson AZ

Winsor McCay did a great many things of which he could be justifiably proud, but I think Gertie the Dinosaur ranks at the top of that lengthy list of accomplishments and I suspect McCay may have felt the same way, for it is still remarkable all these years later. Gertie is more life-like than some people I know! Funny, believable, touching and fascinating, sometimes all at once. This is one of the cornerstones of modern animation and also succeeds on its own terms and merits as both art and entertainment. Winsor McCay grew unhappy and somewhat disgruntled and disillusioned as animation became, in his eyes, more commercial and less artistically inclined. I've often wondered what McCay would have made of the independents, such as Will Vinton and Bill Plympton, among others, and the different forms, like Claymation and the stop-motion work of George Pal and others. I hope he would be pleased with at least some of the work done in the last 90 or so years. An absolute gem. If you haven't seen Gertie, I envy you for the treat you have in store. She's a delight. Well worth getting. Most highly recommended.

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A Key Film in Animation History, 18 March 2002
10/10
Author: Daniel Yates from Montreal, Canada

Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur", is an early animation masterpiece that I believe can be enjoyed by both extreme animation buffs, and the average casual viewer. On different levels of course. The average viewer would see a pleasant little film about a baby like dinosaur showing off for us. An animation fanatic like me would see a lot more. For the time it was made, the animation is fantastic. It's leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I have seen from that time. The detail is sharp, the movements are smooth, and the backgrounds, all hand drawn frame by frame, are vivid and hardly shake at all. I overheard someone mentioning during the class break that he could see an early use of rotoscoping when "McCay" walks onto the screen. The guy was mistaken. Rotoscoping wasn't invented until the 1930's. This is a testament to McCay's artistry: to make characters so life-like that people still think today that they are real.

That previous statement was in reference to McCay's realistic drawing style. However, it could also be applied to the character of Gertie. She is very believable as a real "person." We come to like Gertie and her child-like antics, understanding her needs to be the focus of attention. I liked the way Gertie tried to hog the screen from Jumbo, first by throwing him into the lake, then by hurtling a rock at him. This of course shows us Gertie's infantile character, but, going back to the artwork, is also a perfect example of McKay's mastery of smooth animated movement. All said, this is probably one of the key films in the transition from cartoon characters just being moving drawings to being characters that we can understand and care about.

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7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
"And now Mr. McCay will show us what he thinks a Dinosaurus looked like in real life.", 1 April 2007
7/10
Author: ackstasis from Australia

Often erroneously touted as the first animation film ever made (J. Stuart Blackton's 'An Enchanted Drawing' of 1900 takes that title, at least in America), Gertie the Dinosaur remains, to this day, a charming example of early animation. The live-action segments bookending the animation scenes involve a group of real-life animators portraying themselves, as one of them, Winsor McCay, bets George McManus that he can make a "Dinosaurus" live again by a series of hand-drawn cartoons.

Six months – and ten thousand hand-drawn cartoons – later, McCay is ready to show off his hand-made creation. During dinner, McCay introduces his young, playful female Apatosaurus (?) named Gertie. She emerges somewhat tentatively from her cave, before proceeding to swallow a rock and then an entire tree. As McCay gives her instructions from off-screen, Gertie attempts to follow them, though her endless enthusiasm for mischief often leads her master to scold her. Gertie's playful persona is further explored when Jumbo, a passing Woolly Mammoth, threatens to steal her limelight. Though warned not to hurt the little creature, Gertie doesn't hesitate in picking up poor Jumbo by the tail and hurling him into the lake.

McCay's vision of a dinosaur – allegedly the first time that one had appeared on film – is a little scientifically shaky (I don't expect any dinosaurs to have been able to dance on their hind legs for any prolonged period of time), but I'm more than willing to forgive this in such an early film. What is a Woolly Mammoth doing back then, you may even find yourself asking? The trick is to completely shut out what we all know more than ninety years later, and to just appreciate what a stunning achievement this piece of animation actually was.

Just as the film explicitly states, the animation of Gertie required about ten thousand hand-drawn images (by both McCay and his assistant, John A. Fitzsimmons, who traced the backgrounds), which they inked on rice paper and mounted on cardboard. In the film, it took McCay six months. But, we might ask, shouldn't he have wagered something a little more valuable than just a single dinner? George got off easy, I say!

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Extinct, 5 April 2007
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Dinosaurs, or to use the term used here, dinosauruses.

This is a remarkable little film. Oh, its important because it was very early animation, and advanced for the era, but its interesting otherwise.

Spoilers here, if such a thing can be said of something like this.

The film is in three "real" scenes. The first is a group of artists, all cartoonists, I think. They are on a "joy ride" and conveniently have a flat tire in front of the New Yor natural History Museum, where they view a brontosaurus fossil. One of the artists makes a bet that he can make the dinosauruses "come alive."

Second scene: the artist at work, with a comic interlude of a clerk spilling thousands of pages.

Third scene: the artists at dinner, where our hero first draws a dinosaurus, then "shows" his cartoon. The cartoon is remarkable to some and has some historical interest. But what's more interesting to me is the relationship between cartoon reality and photographed reality. We see the dinosaurus in a sense at the beginning. Later we see the artist draw it and then we miraculously enter the cartoon. At the end of the cartoon, the artist (a lifelike representation) enters the cartoon where formerly the cartoon has entered the dining room. This may all seem trivially folded today. In its day, it was remarkably imaginative.

But this sort of adventure is gone now, extinct.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Shows that ancient cartoons can still be funny, 27 April 2000
Author: GeneralB from USA

This short and rather old cartoon about a dinosaur is quite enjoyable. It was one of the earlier cartoons, and one of the first dinosaur movies. It may also have introduced cartoon violence to the world; Gertie chucks a mammoth named Jumbo into the ocean. I have found that it is more fun to watch the original silent version than the one with sound, although others may disagree.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
A Enchanting Piece of Animation History, 1 June 2005
Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio

Winsor McCay's skill, wit, and creativity are all quite apparent when watching his pioneering animation feature "Gertie the Dinosaur", which is also an enjoyable and sometimes enchanting little movie in its own right.

The format is similar to an earlier feature in which McCay introduced his animated versions of the Little Nemo characters. The footage featuring "Gertie" is prefaced by a mini-story suggesting how the idea for her arose, and then comes the highlight, the animation starring the engaging dinosaur herself. The combination of McCay's imaginative images, and the fascination of dinosaurs in themselves, makes it quite enjoyable.

The animation is extremely good for such an early effort. McCay already had the knack for drawing interesting figures, and in moving pictures such as this one he made sure to include little details that add extra interest. This feature also shows some good story-telling, as a number of times Gertie's antics effectively play off of audience expectations. Her interaction with McCay also works very well, and the whole feature is a very enjoyable piece of cinema and animation history.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
The first universally popular cartoon release, and also the first to exploit the possibilities of 'personality' animation., 16 November 2010
5/10
Author: I B from Mars

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Winsor McCay combined his filmmaking and performance practices by incorporating his film Gertie The Dinosaur into his stage act. His extraordinary draughtsmanship, based on the working process of drawing two 'extreme' poses for his characters and 'in-betweening' the movement from one to the other, rather than drawing in the 'direct' fashion of moving from one image to the next, revolutionized animation: he was effectively working less with the graphic codes encouraged by the unpredictability of immediate visual improvisation and more with 'realist' conventions of preconceived action. McCay sought to bring plausibility to his 'fantastic' forms so that they would transcend their status as animation. This approach suited the American Historical Society, which had approached McCay in 1912 to consider a 'dinosaur' film. The film opened on 8 February 1914 at the Palace Theater, Chicago, and amazed audiences, who could not work out how the illusion had been achieved. This was partly because Gertie The Dinosaur was the first example of an 'interactive' cartoon, where McCay appeared to be giving instructions to Gertie. McCay's fluid illustration is enhanced by the attention he gave to the ways in which Gertie's size and weight would affect the environment, and the way he informed the rhythm and timing of her movements with 'thought' processes and emotive actions. Gertie's legacy is profound. From Willis O'Brien's The Lost World (1925) to Disney's Dinosaur (2000), pre-history has been reanimated. More importantly, the caricatural conviction in Gertie's personality informs character animation into the contemporary era. Nor more appropriate tribute came than Dick Huemer's re-enactment of McCay's vaudeville act in the television series Disneyland in an episode called 'The Art Of The Animated Drawing' (1955). McCay once presciently suggested that 'artists working hand in hand with science will evolve a new school of art that will revolutionize the whole field'. Warner Brothers' master animator, Chuck Jones, once remarked that 'the two most important people in animation are Winsor McCay and Walt Disney, and I'm not sure which should go first'.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Incredibly Astounding! This Is Something To See!, 11 October 2010
10/10
Author: Humphrey Fish from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I have got something to say here. Is Gertie The Dinosaur incredibly astounding? Well let me tell you, it is incredibly astounding! I mean that this is something that is totally and completely remarkable! In my point of view, this is a masterpiece that is going to remain timeless! It is no wonder that this short subject is in the National Film Registry, because I was totally and completely astounded with this fabulous masterpiece brought to us by Windsor McCay! Another thing, this is also going to be 12 minutes of your life that you are really going to enjoy, because we get something very extraordinary in a mere 12 minutes!

Only Windsor McCay could have thought up a masterpiece like this, not anyone else, only Windsor McCay! Well McCay was certainly a genius, because this is something else, it is not like ordinary animated short films, it is overall something to see! What I really liked about this was the part where McCay got onto the screen with Gertie, because it looked so cool! Well bravo to Mr. McCay, because he did an extremely fabulous job with this masterpiece!

You should watch this when you get the chance to do so, because you are not going to regret it at all! This is one 12 minutes of your life that you are not going to regret using, because it just doesn't get any better than this!

10/10

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur is essential viewing for animation buffs, 19 October 2006
10/10
Author: tavm from Baton Rouge, La.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

One of the earliest and certainly most important of animated cartoons is Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur. Surrounded by a live action recreation of McCay with fellow cartoonist George McManus (Bringing Up Father) making a bet of making a dinosaur come to life, the animated footage can still charm any animation buff with scenes of Gertie lifting a foot, crying, throwing Jumbo the elephant to the water, eating a tree, drinking the water, or carrying McCay himself out of frame. The cartoonist drew about a thousand feet of cartoons in six months without cels or backgrounds to put cels over. Just entire drawings with slight differences on sheets of paper. Certainly worth seeing for anyone who wants to study animation from the beginning.

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3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Super-important film that features some very early animation as well as odd insights into the creator of the cartoon, 7 September 2006
10/10
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

This is an odd little film featuring Winsor McCay--the creator of Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo. And, just as in his first Little Nemo film, much of this film features Winsor McCay with his friends (all animators and lovers of animation) and only in the second half do you get to see Gertie. Ostensively, the film is about a bet Winsor made with his friends that he can make a dinosaur come to life--and he does in the form of a short cartoon featuring the lovable character "Gertie". While Gertie is very crude and simple compared to later color cartoons, there is still a lot of charm in the character and the film is a wonderful time capsule. Of great importance to Cinephiles and lovers of early animation.

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