Fantasmagorie gives you a lot to think about in its less-than-two-minutes of running time. It’s a film you watch and reflect upon; conscious that you’re doing so, even as the film plays. You won’t lose yourself in it, but it will make you wonder, more than a little bit, about the world you live in.
Drawn and filmed over a period of about four months by French cartoonist and puppeteer, Émile Cohl, Fantasmagorie follows the adventures, I suppose, of an unnamed clown. But I don’t know if “adventures” is the right word for what we see. Even “experiences” seems wrong, since the action on-screen isn’t specific to a place or period; or even to a physical space; nor does it progress through time in any kind of a normal way.
