Evolution (1925)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | evolution |
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| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1925 |
| length | 41 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Max Fleischer |
| production | Max Fleischer |
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Evolution or Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a American animated film of director Max Fleischer from the year 1925 . It was produced at Inkwell Studios and was created under the scientific supervision of Edward J. Foyles , an employee of the American Museum of Natural History . The aim of the film was toinformthe audience about the theory of evolution as defined by Charles Darwin .
action
Human achievements are presented in a three-minute opening credits, mostly from the field of technology such as large cities, hydroelectric power stations, railways, ocean liners, aircraft and radio, but also agriculture with multi-horse plows. These introductory images alternate with explanatory text panels that ultimately raise the question of whether humans have always been humans or whether they once emerged from an animal. In a final panel, the aim of the film is presented: it should represent the story of the origin of man as it was put together by scientists from individual parts from all over the world.
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The opening credits are followed by explanations of the history of the earth, illustrated with photos of a raging river and the result of his work over millions of years, the Grand Canyon . The layer by layer of sediments with their evidence of earlier life, real fossils such as trilobites , ammonites and dinosaur bones , lead to the first trick sequences. The walls of the canyon are shown in alternating light and dark layers and next to it, first the painting Brontosaurus by Charles R. Knight and then a sculpture based on his painting Agathaumas is displayed.
The next few sequences show the reconstruction of dinosaurs by paleontologists . A sketchy skeleton of a large dinosaur is first supplemented with simulated bones at the missing spots. This representation is transformed into a complete dinosaur model using stop-motion technology by applying a mass that can be modeled to the skeleton. After a series of cave paintings, apparently copied and filmed on paper, real shots of human settlements carved into the rock follow, the pyramid of Kukulcán , the Great Sphinx of Giza , a Roman temple, Stonehenge , an ancient aqueduct . A subheading informs that the examples shown represent the material from which scientists reconstruct the picture of bygone times.
Sculpture after the painting by Agathauma by Charles R. Knight
Reconstruction of a Brontosaurus , sketchy skeleton
Reconstruction of a Brontosaurus , complete skeleton
Reconstruction of a Brontosaurus , modeled figure
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The film jumps back to the beginning of Earth's history, when two stars almost collide and eight new bodies are formed from thrown stardust - the eight planets of the solar system. The planets are hit by meteorites, and the resulting heat causes the matter of the planets to form a seething mass, represented by photos of volcanic lava. On the earth created in this way, the continents form as solid masses. Rising steam leads to the formation of clouds that rain down on the hot ground. The resulting steam forms new clouds and a cycle that has lasted for thousands of years begins until the water gains the upper hand and the oceans emerge on the cooled surface of the earth.
Nobody knows exactly how life began on earth. It is assumed, however, that it was created in calm, warm pools of water by chemical processes. initially a shapeless mass formed, shown in the film by microscopic images of an amoeba-like single cell. This single-celled living being multiplies through division. Soon more complex forms of life emerge. Even at this early stage they have an instinct for self-preservation or fear, a trait that they inherit in all of their offspring. This is followed by recordings of freshwater polyps and trumpet animals, marine invertebrates such as sea cucumbers , sea urchins and cuttlefish .
After all, evolution produces the first vertebrates. The film again shows marine animals, various damselfish, slimy fish and seahorses. The interaction between the hunter and the hunted is represented by various animal species on the hunt, including an octopus that prey on a lobster . The inclusion of a snakehead fish , a lungfish and an olm in aquariums illustrates the idea that fish that have inhabited shallow waters were the first to transform their fins into limbs. This is followed by photographs of a tailed amphibian and trees that have also emerged from the plants in the water.
While some animals adapt to a life in caves and their eyes regress, this is illustrated by pictures of a stalactite cave and an olm , others live in the country and develop scales like chameleons and several species of lizards . This representation is followed by pictures of several dinosaurs, which are non-animated life-size sculptures. Finally, sequences with animated dinosaurs are shown, sometimes peacefully eating grass, but also fight scenes such as the argument between two triceratops or the attack of a tyrannosaurus on a triceratops.
A series of real photos shows the development of birds that have not only conquered the air, but also live in or on the water and have developed a variety of different ways of life. Much broader space is devoted to the development of mammals , with the film showing foxes, brown bears and anteaters , which the tapir describes as the link between elephants and rhinos .
After depicting tropical animals, the film jumps into the Ice Age. It covers large parts of the earth with an ice sheet and wipes out millions of animals, forcing many to move to warmer regions and others to adapt to the new conditions. After thousands of years, the ice recedes, leaving large boulders in the devastated landscape. The landscapes freed from the ice are quickly repopulated.
In numerous short film sequences, strategies of various animals with which they try to hide as hunters or as potential prey are presented: the walking leaf and stick insects through their shape, other animals through their color or through a drawing that they connect to the background or the ground seemingly merge. Then the maternal instinct of lizards, birds and mammals such as otters, raccoons and wolves is discussed. Some mammals live in trees, so the sloths have modified their limbs as a form of adaptation. About several species of apes , macaques and gibbons , the film comes to the orangutan , the gorillas and finally the chimpanzee .
With the discovery of a skull of the Java man , a pre -human being who lived 500,000 years ago, evolution creates the connection between apes and humans. Further pictures show the Piltdown man (100,000 years old) and the Neanderthal man (80,000 years old) in reconstructions as the last pre -humans . The Cro-Magnon man was the first strictly speaking 35,000 years ago. Modern man is represented by members of different cultures, from indigenous peoples to people wearing different national costumes from Latin America, North Africa and Asia. The film ends with a look into the street canyons of a modern city.
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Production notes
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Dave and Max Fleischer were also affected. Dave joined the United States Army and worked as a film editor for Pathé because of his relevant work experience . Max produced educational films for various government agencies, which were cuts of animations and live action films. In Fort Sill , Oklahoma , he made the Army's first educational films about map reading ( Contour Map Reading and How to Read an Army Map , 1918), the operation of various weapon systems ( The Submarine Mine Layer , 1917, How to Operate a Stokes Mortar and How to Fire the Lewis Machine Gun , 1918) and the correct harnessing of artillery horses. Inspired by these educational films made during the war, Fleischer wanted to produce educational films even after the Inkwell Studios was founded. He wanted to make contacts and make his company known in order to promote economic success, and to build on his earlier work at the popular science magazine Popular Science . Another aspect was that Fleischer wanted to give his work an inner meaning by imparting knowledge. He could not realize his plans to have the films shown in schools.
Inkwell Studios' first educational film was released in February 1923, The Einstein Theory of Relativity . It was a twenty-minute compilation of material from the two-hour German science film The Foundations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which was released the previous year . This film and Evolution were mixtures of real film and trick scenes, as Fleischer had already got to know while working for JR Bray Studios . The production of externally financed training and advertising films later became an important pillar of the Fleischers. Examples are Finding His Voice (1929, for Western Electric ), A Jolt for General Germ (1930, for Lysol ), and My Merry Oldsmobile (1931, for the Oldsmobile brand ).
The genesis of Evolution is extraordinarily complex and is regularly presented incorrectly, also by Fleischer Studios. The often mentioned year of publication 1923 refers to the lost film Evolution produced by Charles Urban and his Kineto Company of America . From the Birth of the Planets to the Age of Man . Following the information on the film posters, the New York herpetologist and film director Raymond L. Ditmars directed it. After the Kineto Company went bankrupt in 1924, Max and Dave Fleischer took the film as the basis of Evolution .
In addition to Urban material, the film contains nine, partly shortened, stop-motion sequences depicting dinosaurs, which were taken from the 17 sequences of the early 1918 dinosaur film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain . The picture shows reconstructions of dinosaurs by artist Charles R. Knight , including the paintings of the Apatosaurus ( referred to as the Brontosaurus by Knight and Stephen Jay Gould ) and the Agathaumas . In addition, the life-size dinosaur sculptures created by Josef Pallenberg in 1909 for the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg served as models.
Evolution is evidenced by a title in the opening credits under the scientific supervision of Edward J. Foyles , an employee of the Department of Geology and Paleontology of Invertebrates of the American Museum of Natural History . The promotional materials for the film and some publications also suggest that the film was made in cooperation with the AMNH. In fact, there was no official support other than allowing museum pieces such as a Java human skull to be depicted.
It can no longer be ascertained whether the Scopes trial , which attracted enormous public attention in 1925, was the reason for Max Fleischer to portray evolution in film. In any case, the process contributed to the success of the film. The premiere took place in the Kaufmann Theater of the American Museum of Natural History. Richard Fleischer , then nine years old, attended the event with his parents Max and Ethel. Decades later, he remembered that hundreds of visitors could not get in (the cinema now has 270 seats) and the museum's showcases were overturned and destroyed in the tumult. Demonstrations at other locations were also well attended, and they often resulted in arguments and fights between bitter supporters and opponents of the theory of evolution.
The distribution was carried out by Red Seal Pictures, a distribution company founded by the Fleischer brothers and business partners, which operated a small number of cinemas and had many films shown exclusively in their own houses. The Red Seal Pictures could only hold their own for a year. Evolution was released on VHS in the 1990s and DVD in 2006.
criticism
Inkwell Studios advertised evolution as "poetic as well as informative" work that describes the fundamental secrets of the world with the universe, the explanation of Darwin's theory of evolution and a representation of human history. As on the early cave paintings, the viewer can look back on the film of the Fleischer brothers, who created their own cave paintings here.
In terms of the depiction of the dinosaurs , evolution clearly lags behind modern works such as the US documentary series Our Kosmos: The Journey Continues (original title: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey ) back. However, it was believed that the core of the film was successful in depicting the development of life from the beginning using simple means. Darwin himself would probably have liked the film.
The American film historian Mark F. Berry described Evolution as an ambitious but inevitably superficial documentary that tries in 40 minutes to trace life all the way back to the creation of the universe. The enthusiastic portrayal of the Piltdown man is remarkable . Berry scoffs at The Walking Ape-Man of Java , which ends the portrayal of the cavemen and who is referred to in the film as the oldest known human being, saying that this is a great title for a monster film from the 1950s.
Berry goes on to say that the documentary and the entire film industry were still in their infancy in 1921. But even in this context evolution is poorly structured. In front of the animated dinosaur scenes there is a passage that shows the preparation of fossils and the reconstructions of dinosaurs. Many of the current scientific findings at the time of production are now outdated and refuted. A little bit of exploitation is done by incorporating nude scenes in the style of National Geographic - female nudity, of course. But regardless of all its shortcomings, evolution is still worth seeing today, at least rather than the “smug” film The Animal World, produced by Irwin Allen in 1956 with the same intention .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Michele H. Bogart: Animation as Art Work . In: Prospects 2000, Volume 25, pp. 425-484, here p. 458 and footnote 82, doi: 10.1017 / S0361233300000727 .
- ↑ Richard Koszarski: Hollywood on the Hudson. Film and television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London 2008, ISBN 978-0-8135-4293-5 , pp. 322, pp. 364-365.
- ↑ Oliver Gaycken: Early cinema and evolution . In: Bernard Lightman, Bennett Zon (Eds.): Evolution and Victorian Culture . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, pp. 94-120, doi: 10.1017 / CBO9781139236195.005 .
- ↑ a b Allen A. Debus: Dinosaurs Ever Evolving. The Changing Face of Prehistoric Animals in Popular Culture . McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina 2016, ISBN 978-0-7864-9951-9 , pp. 64-66.
- ^ Richard Fleischer : Out of the Inkwell. Max Fleischer and the animation revolution . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2005, ISBN 0-8131-2355-0 , pp. 35-36.
- ↑ Evolution in the Internet Movie Database (English) , accessed on January 27 of 2019.
- ^ Filmography , Fleischer Studios website, accessed January 27, 2019.
- ^ A b Mark F. Berry: The Dinosaur Filmography . McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina 2015, ISBN 978-1-4766-0674-3 , p. 99.