The Musician Monkey [Le Singe musicien] (1878)

Written By Ion Martea

Director: Émile Reynaud
France (formerly French Republic)
1878

Émile Reynaud's animated work predates the successes in moving photography. His drawings were brought to life by his praxinoscope. One of these works from his second series of strips is "The Musician Monkey" (1878). Charming and simultaneously creepy in its visuals, this proto-animation harks back to the heyday of magic lantern shows, aiming to entertain its audience with beauty and humour. The functional composition is rudimentary in this case, as it focuses mainly on movement, rather than on artistic skill. Nonetheless, this experiment with simian anthropomorphism announced to the world that pictures were no longer still.

Ion Martea

Ion Martea is a British award-winning poet, novelist and critic, and the founding editor of Essential Films.

https://www.essential-films.co.uk/ion-martea
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Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878)
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Learned Dogs [Les Chiens savants] (1878)