A Fantasy

Original title: Fantasmagorie

1908
2m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

The first all-animated film in history, a series of scenes without much narrative structure, but morphing into each other.The first all-animated film in history, a series of scenes without much narrative structure, but morphing into each other.The first all-animated film in history, a series of scenes without much narrative structure, but morphing into each other.

Director
- Émile Cohl

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.9/10

YOUR RATING

Director
- Émile Cohl

See production info at IMDbPro

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings. In 1908, chalkboard caricaturists were common vaudeville attractions, and the characters in the film look as though they've been drawn on a chalkboard, but it's an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative, Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.

Connections
Edited into International Festival of Animation (1977)

User reviews19

Review

Featured review

7/10

First Fully Animated Hand-Drawn Movie

Considered the first fully animated film, Emile Cohl's 1908 "Fantasmagorie" departed from J. Stuart Blackton's 1906 "Humorous Phases" by showing a total hand-drawn movie rather than using a combination of live action, cut-out animation as well as hand-drawn scenes.

Cohl was inspired by Blackton's work in reflecting white lines on a black background. However, while Blackton used an actual blackboard to draw his figures, Cohl used 700 paper drawings, 8 drawings for each second, and then shot them onto negative film. He would shoot two frames for each drawing while his film speed was 16 frames per second. Cohl labored 5 months to create this 1 minute, 20 second cartoon. The viewer has to see this movie several times to catch the quick movements of morphings from one set of figures to the next.