True cinematic animation began with Fantasmagorie by Émile Cohl (1857-1938) in 1908. Cohl is widely recognized as “The Father of the Animated Cartoon”, although other films had shown animation earlier, notably "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" by the American J. Stuart Blackton (April 1906). Cohl was an artist working for the Gaumont Film Company when The Haunted Hotel, a live-action film directed by Blackton with some stop-motion animated objects, played in Paris in April l907. It was a popular success and created a demand for similar films. Cohl made films that were all animated cartoons with simple plots.
"Fantasmagorie" was made from February to May – June 1908, and debuted on August 17, 1908. It is considered the first fully animated film since it had a semblance of a plot, not just moving cartoon drawings, although its “story” heavily featured characters metamorphing into objects or each other. (During the 1880s Cohl had been one of the leaders of the absurdist “Incoherent” art movement. In 1885 it hosted a masked ball to which Cohl went costumed as an artichoke). Cohl made two more animated cartoons during 1908, “Le Cauchemar du fantoche” (The Puppet’s Nightmare) and “Un Drame chez les fantoches” (A Drama Among the Puppets).
-- Fred Patten
