"Flip's Circus" is an 8-minute animated short film from 1921, so five more years and this one is 100 years old. the writer and director is famous early animation filmmaker Winsor McCay. Of course, looking at when this was made, it is a black-and-white silent film. The star here is Flip, the title character, who is a circus clown and who shows us a performance including tricks, dangerous animals and assistants. All in all, I would not say that this was a good watch. But we have to keep in mind that it is really from the early days of animation and if it helped on the path to the Golde Age of Animation including Disney, Warner Bros. and others, than I am perfectly fine with this little movie here. Still, I would only recommend it to film historians and the most die-hard animation lovers. Everybody else will see nothing in it and should skip it.
3 Reviews
Flip's Circus is a jumbled mess of fragments from Winsor McCay
tavm5 June 2007
Warning: Spoilers
From what I saw on Google Video, this seemed to be another Winsor McCay project that he never got to completing since on the title it says in parentheses "1918-21". Anyway, here are the contents: Flip is balancing his hat on his face while leaning forwards and backwards. He eventually falls face forward. Flip opens the tent flap to reveal a lot of large animals behind him. A large animal creature-I have no idea what it is-comes out and starts to interact with Flip. Flip keeps hitting him. Flip puts his head in the animal's mouth. At one point, the animal swallows him as we see moving bumps on the stomach. He then spits him back out! And in a couple of scenes, a car comes by with the driver communicating with Flip via a chalk board that keeps appearing throughout the short. That's all I remember of that. Fascinating to watch but because of the unevenness of the sequences, I'd only recommended this to McCay enthusiasts.
Incomplete Film
Michael_Elliott2 May 2012
Flip's Circus (1921)
Here's another film from Winsor McCay but sadly it too is only available in various fragments thrown today and it's not enough to fully understand the movie. Thankfully there are still over six minutes worth of fragments so we get the basic outline of the film, which has Flip, the circus owner, performing in various locations with a trained dinosaur. I'm really not sure how much of this film is actually lost and how much of it just never got completed. There are several bits of footage with a sign showing "Argument 2" or "Argument 3" where I'm guessing footage was supposed to either have been added or perhaps this is just some that is lost. Either way, one at least gets a very good idea of what the film was going for, which was just Flip doing various tricks with the dinosaur. As you'd expect, the animation was quite good throughout and I thought the character of Flip was nice and strong enough to carry you through the movie. The dinosaur was clearly modeled after Gertie and looks good as well. Fans of McCay will certainly want to check it out as well as those interested in this eras animation.
Here's another film from Winsor McCay but sadly it too is only available in various fragments thrown today and it's not enough to fully understand the movie. Thankfully there are still over six minutes worth of fragments so we get the basic outline of the film, which has Flip, the circus owner, performing in various locations with a trained dinosaur. I'm really not sure how much of this film is actually lost and how much of it just never got completed. There are several bits of footage with a sign showing "Argument 2" or "Argument 3" where I'm guessing footage was supposed to either have been added or perhaps this is just some that is lost. Either way, one at least gets a very good idea of what the film was going for, which was just Flip doing various tricks with the dinosaur. As you'd expect, the animation was quite good throughout and I thought the character of Flip was nice and strong enough to carry you through the movie. The dinosaur was clearly modeled after Gertie and looks good as well. Fans of McCay will certainly want to check it out as well as those interested in this eras animation.
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