How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

Director: Winsor McCay

Synopsis: A hungry mosquito spots and follows a man on his way home. The mosquito slips into the room where the man is sleeping, and gets ready for a meal. His first attempts startle the man and wake him up, but the mosquito is very persistent.

Animation was a relatively new genre in a medium which was itself less than 20 years old when How a Mosquito Operates was made, and Winsor McCay’s simple animation seems more impressed with the fact of its own existence than with any story it might tell.   It’s a very simple animation, just a pencil sketch with no background detail and this, combined with the repetitive nature of its story, makes its five minute running time seem a lot longer than it actually is.   The plot sees a man followed home by a mosquito who clearly has him marked out as a tasty meal.   Although the man repeatedly attempts to brush the mosquito away, its persistence ultimately pays off to such a degree that it eventually explodes after gorging itself.   It’s not a bad film, but it should have been only three minutes long at most.

(Reviewed 13th April 2015)