Poor Pierrot - Comments & Tips

Early animation that was manually projected from a strip of a few hundred foreground pictures on top of a static background projection. The digitised version is a 5-minute reconstruction using the original frames. It's that much shorter because the original animation was supposedly drawn out with live narration, music, and some repetition. In its current form, it's a bit difficult to understand what's going on. Being able to follow the story seems to have relied on having that separate narrator. As a pioneer in projected animation, it's incomparable, but the rating reflects this particular reconstruction which just seems like it's missing some parts. The jokes only barely work, and the ending is unsatisfying.

The short is rudimentary, certainly, but it''s strangely impressive.

This is notable purely because it''s one of the first examples of animation and because of the effort and craftsmanship that has clearly gone into it. It''s short, a little strange and a little charming.