My first encounter with the film , Fantasmagorie, was while I was converting myself from an animation enthusiast to an animation student. Intrigued by how the art of animation came about I started reading and researching about it online as well as in books. Thanks to Youtube, I actually got to watch this film.

This two part article will focus on these two films, one made in 1908 and another in 2008.

Part I focuses on the original, Fantasmagorie, which is the earliest known example of a fully animated film made in 1908. It gives the reader an understanding of this short animated film, which is very important in the history of animation.

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Part II of the article is a comparative study of the remake Fantasmagorie 2008, made by Rastko Ciric, a professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. It is a computer 3D remake of the original and connects two centuries providing a synthesis of traditional and computer animation.

PART I
Fantasmagorie:1908
A fantastic, energetic, cleverly-inventive stream of almost indecipherable animation can be a way of describing the first ever full-length animated film made in the year 1908. Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie , is perhaps one of the earliest film depictions of animation. Cohl, a French caricaturist, was in fact quite often described as "The Father of the Animated Cartoon."

Early examples of Animation
The idea that images shown quickly before the eye can give the impression of movement was known long before and in fact led to the invention of the motion picture camera. Just draw on all the pages of a sticky pad and you can see how easy it is to make a flipbook animation.

In 1906, J Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of Vitagraph, created the first motion picture cartoon, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, with a similar idea. The film uses stop motion techniques to build drawn faces. Since in the film the faces don't move, therefore they aren't truly animated.

Two years later, Gaumont's Emile Cohl created the first fully animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), and in the process lifted cartoons out of the realm of trick films and started them on the path toward animated features. The two-minute film Fantasmagorie (alternatively, in English: A Fantasy, Black and White, or Metamorphosis) is made up on approximately 700 double-exposed drawings, using what is known as a "chalk-line effect", a technique probably borrowed from early animator James Stuart Blackton.

What is the movie all about?
Fantasmagorie is a surreal story: a series of scenes without much narrative structure, morphing from one scene to another without any real connection except for the way lines keep moving to any shape or form that Cohl could think of. It could possibly be a stylistic tribute to the short-lived, long-forgotten Incoherent Movement of the 1880s, of which Cohl was a part. The title of the film itself is taken from the word 'fantasmograph', which referred to a magic lantern that could project ghostly images across walls.

Not following any standard narrative, Fantasmagorie is quite difficult to follow. The film starts with a hand quickly sketching a dangling clown, which instantly transforms into a large man in an elevator, which materialises into a man in a cinema whose view is suddenly blocked by a woman with a tall feathery hat. This scene, probably the longest single sequence at about 20 seconds, shows the man desperately trying to glimpse the screen again by peeling away the feathers of the hat, only for the women's head to suddenly expand into a large bubble for the next scene transition.

The remainder of the film is a hectic jumble of jumping about, fishing, sword-fighting, canons, flowers, milk bottles, elephants turning into houses and, for the grand finale, a character departing into the left-hand side of the screen on a horse. Overall he creates a visual spectacle and orchestrates the action as he moves along. And it all happens in the space of two minutes!

Technique of the film
To make his film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings. This simple technique produced consistent movement and continuity between the drawings, and allowed just Cohl and a camera assistant to create the film. In those days, chalkboard caricaturists were common attractions and the characters in the film look as though they've been drawn on a chalkboard, but it's an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.

100 years of Fantasmagorie
Audiences might have been even more awestruck then than we would be now, with all the improvements that have happened in the one hundred years since then. In spite of this, even today, with all the technological advances in the field of animation, Fantasmagorie is still entertaining. The fact that it has no plot or real point, except to show off what animation can do, and despite the relative crudeness of the drawings, its relentless, violent energy, and short running time make it a joy to watch.

Nonetheless, the film carries great historical importance in the field of animation, and Cohl's style undoubtedly influenced such animators as Winsor McCay, perhaps most famous for his 1914 animated short film, Gertie the Dinosaur.

A fast-paced, confusing and almost-surreal short film, Fantasmagorie is truly one of the most fascinating animated shorts ever and Cohl deserves the credit for taking that crucial early step on the path that led to the fully animated features that came later. To be concluded...

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Further Read:
Emlie Cohl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Cohl
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0169871/
http://www.forumdesimages.fr/fr/cycle.php?ccl_id=337

Emlie Cohl 's Fantasmagorie (1908)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE

Gaumont
http://www.gaumont.fr/accueil.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaumont