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How a Mosquito Operates (1912, also known as The Story of a Mosquito) is a silent animated film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. The second of McCay's animated films, it is about a giant mosquito who torments a sleeping man. The short is noted as one of the earliest examples of animation, and is regarded for the high technical quality of its naturalistic animation, which is considered far ahead of that of its contemporaries. McCay followed up this film in 1914 with his most famous work of animation, Gertie the Dinosaur.

McCay had built a reputation for the technical dexterity of his cartooning, displayed most famously in his children's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1911). Beginning in 1906, McCay displayed his abilities doing chalk talks before live audiences on the vaudeville circuit. After seeing flip books his son Bob had brought home, McCay delved into the infant art of film animation. He finished his first film, Little Nemo, in 1911, and incorporated it into his vaudeville act. He followed the success of the first film with How a Mosquito Operates, in which a mosquito preys on a sleeping man; the mosquito's abdomen naturalistically inflates as it draws blood, until it explodes. The quality of the animation was far in advance of its contemporaries, and was not matched until Walt Disney's feature films of the 1930s.

Overview


How a Mosquito Operates has also gone under the title The Story of a Mosquito, and is one of the earliest examples of line-drawn animation. Drawing inspiration from the films of Charlie Chaplin, the film relies on physical, visual action—a strength of the film medium. It came out at a time when audience demand for animation outstripped studios' ability to supply it. When most studios were struggling merely to make animation work, McCay showed a mastery of the medium and a sense of how to create believable motion, without having invested in formal analysis of movement.

Rather than expanding like a balloon, the mosquito's abdomen fills up according to its bodily structure in a naturalistic fashion. The mosquito is egotistical, persistent, and calculating, as when it whets its beak on a stone wheel. Though ugly and horrifying to look at, its actions are balanced with humor, as when it finds itself so engorged with blood that it must lie down.

Synopsis
A man looks about in fear before entering his room to go to sleep. A giant mosquito with a top hat and briefcase flies in through a transom after it finds itself to large to squeeze through a keyhole. It feeds on the man in bed, who repeatedly tries in vain to shoo away his assailant. Eventually the mosquito drinks itself so full that it explodes.

Background


Winsor McCay (c. 1969–1934) developed prodigiously detailed and accurate drawing skills early in life. He earned a living as a young man drawing portraits and posters in dime museums, and drew large crowds with his ability to draw quickly in public. He began working as a newspaper illustrator full-time in 1898, and in 1903 began drawing comic strips. His greatest comic strip success was the children's fantasy comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which he began in 1905. In 1906, McCay began performing on the vaudeville circuit, doing chalk talks—performances in which he drew before a live audience.

Inspired by the flip books his son brought home, McCay "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons. He claimed that he "was the first man in the world to make animated cartoons", though he was preceded by James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl. McCay made four thousand drawings on rice paper for his first animated short, which starred his Little Nemo characters. The film Little Nemo debuted in movie theatres in 1911, and McCay soon after incorporated it into his vaudeville act.

How a Mosquito Operates was McCay's second film. Little Nemo was a plotless film in which McCay appears in live-action sequences; he animates the Nemo characters to prove to his colleagues that he can make his characters move. In the main sequence of Mosquito, McCay himself does not appear. As he had already demonstrated that pictures could be made to move in his first film, in the second he focuses on a story, albeit a simple one.



Much like the early experiments in animation of French animator Émile Cohl (1857–1838), McCay used the Nemo film to show the capabilities of the medium, and was made up of fanciful sequences demonstrating motion for its own sake. In Mosquito, McCay wanted to demonstrate greater believability. He balanced the outlandish action with naturalistic timing, motion, and weight; the heavier the mosquito becomes, the more difficulty it has keeping its balance. McCay gave character to the mosquito; it is egotistical, persistent, and calculating.

McCay put the film together in December 1911 and released it in January 1912, first as part of his vaudeville act, and later in movie theaters. It was distributed to foreign theaters by Vitagraph Studios; within the United States, McCay showed the film as he toured his act inthe spring and summer. In a live-action prologue that has been lost, which McCay and his daughter vacation in New Jersey at their summer home. There, they "are pestered to death by mosquitoes". McCay finds a professor who speaks the insects' language who tells him to "make a series of drawings to illustrate just how the insect does its deadly work". Months later, McCay invites the professor to watch the film.

The idea for the film was taken from a June 5, 1909, episode of McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strip. In the original, the mosquito (without top hat or briefcase) gorges itself on an alcoholic; in the end, the mosquito itself becomes so drunk it isn't able to fly away. Vaudeville acts and humor magazines commonly joked about the large New Jersey mosquitoes, or "Jersey Skeeters", and McCay had frequently used mosquitoes in his comic strip, including an episode of Little Nemo in which Nemo is attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes after returning from a trip to Mars.

Reception and legacy


The film opened to large audiences and was well received. The Detroit Times wrote of audiences laughing until they cried, and that they "went home feeling that [they] had seen one of the best programs" in the theater's history. The paper called the film "a marvelous arrangement of colored drawings", referring to the final explosive sequence, which McCay had hand-painted red. The New York newspaper The Morning Telegraph remarked, "[McCay's] moving pictures of his drawings have caused even film magnates to marvel at their cleverness and humor." In interviews, McCay talked of the potential the new animated film medium had for "serious and educational work", and hinted at the subject of his next work, Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).

Animator John Randolph Bray's first film, The Artist's Dream, appeared in 1913; it alternates live-action and animated sequences, and has a dog which explodes after eating too many sausages. Though these aspects are reminiscent of McCay's first two films, Bray stated he was not aware of McCay's films when he was working on The Artist's Dream.

Following Mosquito, animation became story-based, and for decades rarely drew attention to the technology behind it; live action sequences also became infrequent. The technical quality of McCay's animation was so far ahead of its time that it was not matched until the Disney studios gained prominence in the 1930s with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. McCay's biographer, animator John Canemaker, commended McCay for his ability to imbue the mosquito with character and a personality.