Max Fleischer and Otto Messmer - Their Work in the Golden Age of Animation

Two pioneering animators that I have chose to write about are Max Fleischer (silent work only) and Otto Messmer. Based on class screenings of their films, plus text readings, I shall compare and contrast the two animators in terms of content, visual style and innovative techniques of animation.

Max Fleischer's content deals with mostly the combination of animation with live action. The content of Messmer's work was Felix the cat and how he dealt with his problems quickly and efficiently. By comparing the two I would say that since Felix and Ko-ko were the first cartoon stars, they had already established their unique personalities and senses of humor.

Ko-ko the clown was always being bossed around by his master and sometimes tormentor Max Fleischer. The ways that Ko-ko could get back at Max were very amusing and innovative for it's time. In "Modeling" Ko-ko causes trouble by making fun of a "hook nosed patron" and the sculpture of him. He later gets off his drawing board to climb into the sculpture and he brings distortions to it. Ko-ko even gives Max nightmares in "Bedtime" where Ko-ko becomes a giant walking through New York City just because Max left him on a mountaintop. Besides Ko-ko's personality, the introductions of him in the beginning of every Out of the Inkwell cartoon were different every time and never duplicated.

Felix's personality and the way he handled things were almost human like. He would think and walk back and forth pondering how to solve his problems. Most, of which he solved with exclamation points, question marks and his tail. In "Nightfall" he acts like Macgyver and makes a padlock and key by merely using his tail and question marks. Felix was considered human like because of his similar lifestyle to your everyday man at the time. In "Woos Whoopee" Felix stays out all night getting drunk with the boys instead of coming home at his curfew where his wife is waiting for him with a rolling pin in her hands. He even fools around with a girl in "Flim Flam Films" where his three sons for fun, film him and later show it to mommy where Felix gets the crap beat out of him.

By contrasting these two animators on content I would have to say that Fleischer's work is more unrealistically based where as Messmer's is basically a cat that acts, moves and thinks like a human. I would like to just bluntly say that Fleischer's is a whacked out sort of crazy world and Messmer's is more realistic. But saying that is not paying attention to the real facts of the matter such as cats don't get drunk or cheat on their wives. But still though, the reactions they received from audiences is well supported by the characters personalities and how they handle their complications.

The visual style of Messmer and Fleischer can be described as pleasant. They were both quite pleasant since for one, Felix looked very cute. The jaggedness of his body to his roundness form in 1925 gave him a very comfortable look and made him easier to animate. His big round eyes and head made him very adorable and was why the Felix dolls were such a huge success. Ko-ko was pleasant merely because everyone loves a clown and seeing a clown with the confrontations with his master is very entertaining. I mean who the hell really doesn't like clowns, I know I love them or for that matter a tiny little sidekick puppy named Fitz.

These two animators visual style really differed. Whereas I feel that Felix had everything that a great cartoon needed great animation gags, and a character that is believable, loveable and entertaining. I also feel that any use of the rotoscope is jarring as seen with Fleischer's work. When you put something "super animated" as Fleischer and the critics used to call it, next to a cartoony little dog or something it just doesn't connect well. In a way that only I could describe it is this, it's like putting a man on the moon (with it's gravity) and putting another man on Earth (with it's gravity). The cartoon bounces all around and just has a pure insane wackyness to it that just can't be retained or held down (this would be the moon man). But a traced over actor looks much more rigid (this would be the Earth man) and out of place called the cartoon universe which he is in. But all in all, it comes out well done since a rotoscoped man is dealing with a live action world half of the time.

Finally in innovative techniques of animation Fleischer beats Messmer's ass any day of the week. I mean don't get me wrong here, Messmer really only had going for him was his assembly line cartoon business (which he didn't invent himself it was more or less much like Raoul Barre's). But his process was good enough to knock out a great Felix cartoon every month. I also do have to give credit to Messmer who practically did everything behind the Felix productions to animator, director, gag man and still had enough time to do the Felix comic strip weekly. But Fleischer's technological wizardry surpasses him by far any of his credits.

Max and his brothers invented such things as the rotoscope and the rotograph which were used to trace over live action footage to animate and to put animated footage with a live action moving background instead of black and white photographs. Fleischer even came up with the bouncing ball, which was used in his Song Car-Tune. He also had a great style for metamorphosis (which he didn't create but was used before him by Cohl) and his combination of animated and live action footage that was really ahead of it's time with his painstakingly technology. He did a lot of great things with his combination work by merely only using photographs as backgrounds. Later on when he used more live action footage in such a great short as "Ko-ko's Earth Control" where Fitz pulls a lever that claims 'the world will come to an end'. Instead just pure all out 20's insanity happens on the streets of New York City such as people and cars moving very fast, buildings that look like they're falling in the typical Monty Python animation and even pedestrians sliding down a slanted sidewalk.

So in closing, I believe I was able to answer all the questions properly dealing with Max Fleischer and Otto Messmer. With such great pioneers of animation I truly respect the background of this field that I have just begun to enter. Also how much of a debt the animators of today owe to Messmer and Fleischer due to their content, visual style and innovative techniques of animation.