Matches An Appeal c.1899 : The world's oldest animated film? Maybe.

What is the world’s oldest animated film? Or rather, knowing film history–what’s the world’s oldest surviving animated film? Many sources will point to the cartoon Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) or “trick film” The Enchanted Drawing (1900), which used stop motion to make a cartoon face change expressions. But chances are you might’ve stumbled across a few sources making the case for an obscure short called Matches: An Appeal–said to have been produced in 1899.

It’s a pretty cute little film, too. Via the magic of stop motion, two small figures made of matchsticks work together to write an “appeal” asking the public to donate money to send matches to needy soldiers. To be precise, they write: “For one guinea Messrs Bryant & May will forward a case containing sufficient to supply a box of matches to each man in a battalion with the name of the sender inside. N.B. Our soldiers need them.” The stop motion is surprisingly sophisticated for its early date–perhaps a little too sophisticated.

Charmed by this little-known short’s pragmatic purpose during a fairly obscure war (the World Wars get all the spotlight nowadays), I did a little reading and found out that not only is the 1899 date in question, but, there’s also an ongoing controversy about Melbourne-Cooper! Some historians feel he’s been unfairly overlooked and was actually the true creator of some of our most famous ancient films. Allow me to explain, somewhat briefly.

The first person to champion the Melbourne-Cooper cause was his daughter, Audrey Wadowska. In the late 1950s, when her father was in his 80s, she went to a film history exhibit and became convinced that a group of early films attributed to George Albert Smith contained shots of her relatives, which would therefore make Melbourne-Cooper the more likely creator. She began searching for documents and memorabilia relating to her father’s career, determined to write his life story and restore what she felt was his rightful place in cinema history.

The early films in question were six shorts including The Little Doctor (1901), As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), and the famed Grandma’s Reading Glass (1900) (which contains the world’s oldest closeup). Wadowska became very dedicated to her cause, giving lectures and creating an archive of her father’s material (which is currently in Rotterdam).

Soon more researchers were championing the “wronged Melbourne-Cooper” cause, most notably Dutch historian Tjitte de Vries (he even co-authored a 570+ page book about him!). The debate heated up in the 1990s with a whole series of articles in the film journals KINtop and Film History, where arguments for and against the obscure British filmmaker flew like ping pong balls. One that I found enlightening was the 2002 Film History article “Smith versus Melbourne-Cooper: An end to the dispute” by Stephen Bottomore, which gives a strong case for George Albert Smith being the rightful filmmaker after all. Bottomore points out that much of Wadowska’s evidence relied on reminisces from family and friends, which is grand and all, but not super objective. (I agree.)

So how’s this all related to the contested 1899 release date of Matches: An Appeal? Well, if Melbourne-Cooper was an active and innovative filmmaker around 1900-01, it would seem to make the 1899 date more plausible. However, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he became an independent filmmaker until about 1906, and it’s likely the poor maligned George Albert Smith made the 1900-01 films mentioned earlier. And since the animation is very sophisticated for 1899, it’s possible the “Appeal” was made during WWI. Indeed, many historians–including the BFI–peg 1914-15 as the more believable time frame.

Personally, I feel that since more archival material is available online than ever before, it should be easier to lay some of the Arthur Melbourne-Cooper arguments to rest–and perhaps find some clues to the Matches mystery. If I might humbly throw my amateur historian hat somewhat near the ring and make some very cursory sweeps through the Interwebs, I can report:

Searching the online film magazines and trade journals on Media History for “Melbourne-Cooper” with the dates limited to 1895-1930 brings up a grand total of: 2 results. (So does “Melbourne Cooper” sans hyphen, mind you.) For comparison, “Melies” brings up a whopping 3223 results. On newspapers.com, whose search engine is dumb and needs you to be more specific, I looked up “Arthur Melbourne-Cooper” from 1895-1930 and found zero matches. “George Melies,” on the other hand, has 121 matches.

Which all doesn’t prove that Melbourne-Cooper wasn’t important in retrospect–just that in his time he seems to have been a minor figure. If historians did overlook his accomplishments, it wasn’t a case of taking a famous name and trying to sweep it under a rug (for murky reasons).

https://silentology.wordpress.com/2019/08/14/is-matches-an-appeal-the-oldest-surviving-animated-film/