This cartoon from the Great War of 1914-18 isn't quite what the opening would lead you to expect -- and the message of the finale isn't quite what the propaganda slant of the middle section has led you to expect either! Cleverly animated in a deliberately crude fashion (only small sections of each frame actually move), it manages to get across changes of expression etc with effective accuracy. The scenes of a devastated post-conflict world (oh, those evil Germans!) are actually quite creepy, and there is an H.G.Wells or John Wyndham flavour to the high-tech invaders.
Instead of using intertitles to convey the characters' speech the film uses strip-cartoon-style speech bubbles in which the words appear slowly one by one; the timing is evidently adjusted to allow for an audience who find the task of reading a laborious one, and I did get a bit impatient waiting to reach the punchline where there were more than a few words involved. Still, the production is clever and entertaining, if clearly aimed at a wartime audience. And I was certainly successfully 'had'!
Instead of using intertitles to convey the characters' speech the film uses strip-cartoon-style speech bubbles in which the words appear slowly one by one; the timing is evidently adjusted to allow for an audience who find the task of reading a laborious one, and I did get a bit impatient waiting to reach the punchline where there were more than a few words involved. Still, the production is clever and entertaining, if clearly aimed at a wartime audience. And I was certainly successfully 'had'!
