Fantasmagorie

Fantasmagorie is a French animated short film directed by Émile Cohl and released in 1908. Often cited as one of the earliest examples of traditional hand-drawn animation, it helped establish the vocabulary of the animated cartoon through continuous motion and metamorphosis of drawings. The film consists of a sequence of simple black-line drawings on a white ground that morph into various objects, people, and scenes as a roaming, nameless protagonist navigates a dreamlike world. The imagery is whimsical and surreal, with objects transforming into other things—such as a chalk-like line turning into a pipe, a man into a bird, or a wall into a window—typical of early animation's experimentation with form.

Production and technique: Cohl created the work by drawing thousands of frames directly on sheets of paper and photographing them in sequence. The animation is silent and would later be accompanied by music when shown in theatres. The production, funded by Gaumont, is generally believed to comprise around 700 individual drawings, executed in a continuous stream rather than as separate scenes.

Legacy: Fantasmagorie is widely recognized as a foundational piece in the history of animation. It demonstrated the potential of line-based hand-drawn animation and the idea that movement could be achieved through rapid frame-by-frame drawing. It influenced later European animators and contributed to the development of more elaborate storytelling in cartoons. The film has been preserved by film archives and appears in anthologies and restorations of early cinema.