The Cartoon Factory (1924)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Directors:

Dave Fleischer
Max Fleischer

Release Date:

21 February 1924 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Comedy | Short

Plot Keywords:

Sequel | Clown | Out Of The Inkwell | Koko The Clown

Runtime:

8 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Out of the Inkwell Films

Movie Connections:

Followed by Koko's Thanksgiving (1925)

Fleischers Knew How To Make A Silent Cartoon Entertaining

This is another wild Koko The Clown silent cartoon from the genius of Max and Dave Fleischer. It's pretty good when you can still look innovative with animation almost 85 years later! This 1924 effort still is impressive.

I really liked Koko running the cartoon machine in which a landscape would be continuously drawn at the top of the page as the machine moved left to right. In fact, most of this cartoon had some very good artwork and, to me at least, I like to see Max's drawing done in higher speed. He's a real artist and you can see a lot of it here in this nine-minute short.

Mixed in, as is normal, is some real-life footage. In this cartoon, we get a toy soldier to turns real and begins to draw clones of himself on the walls of a house. The soldiers then attack Koko, who later fights back with a cannon that is drawn but has real-life artillery. As I said, these old silent cartoons were pretty clever.

With no music or voices, I guess you had to make up for it with some great visuals to keep the audience attentive. The Fleischer brothers usually succeeded in keeping peoples' interest in their work.