This is a very early example of an animated film and may be one of the first that you would properly call a "cartoon" -- intended to be light, fun and friendly for kids. Created by hand-drawing 10,000 images, it pioneered animation techniques.
Specs:
12 minutes long, black and white, silent. And very easy to find online.
Our family's average rating (on a scale of 1-10):
7.13
More about the film and our response to it:
Fun and unique, Gertie the Dinosaur is both a film and a "making of-" rolled into one. It starts out with live actors, a group of friends out for a ride. They get a flat tire, walk into the nearby museum and, checking out the bones of a dinosaur, one of them (Winsor McKay, our animator, playing himself) is inspired to produce the animation.
There are some title cards explaining how he did the drawings and filmed them, then the friends sit down in front of a projector to watch the film. Action switches to sweet Gertie who, as a character, is quite appealing.
Watching Gertie gives great perspective. The methods of animation that kids are so familiar with had to start somewhere. This reaches back to the earliest days of animated film when people were just working out how to do it. Definitely worth seeing.
Iconic shot:
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