What was the first movie to use stop-motion?
Stop-motion is one of the oldest special effects techniques in the history of filmmaking. While most people today think of animated movies when picturing the uniquely time-consuming process, its origins go back to the mid-1800s. In its early uses, it gave the illusion of movement to any number of objects on film, from toys to hairbrushes and even live actors. Over the years, though, the practice developed toward its modern incarnation, which primarily uses puppets or plasticine figures.
How is stop-motion defined, though? Well, it’s simply a technique in which objects are physically moved in minuscule increments between individually photographed frames. When the frames are played back, the objects display a uniquely identifiable sense of movement that is totally different from CGI techniques or standard animation.
Identifying the first movie to use stop-motion isn’t as simple as it may appear on the surface. For example, many outlets list Albert E Smith and J Stuart Blackton’s The Humpty Dumpty Circus as the first film to use the technique. For this to be true, the short film – which animates the movement of a toy set – would need to have been made in 1897 or 1898, as some outlets claim. However, others have put its release year as 1908, and there are no official records or copies of the film to clear up the disparity. In fact, only one image from the film exists today.
If The Humpty Dumpty Circus did come out in 1908, then the first movie to use stop-motion is Segundo de Chomón’s Le théâtre de Bob, released in 1906. This Spanish filmmaker was often compared to the legendary Georges Méliès because he also made fantasy films with mind-boggling visual illusions. Le théâtre de Bob features three minutes of stop-motion footage showing dolls moving around a miniature theatre operated by a child named Bob.
So, what was the first feature-length stop-motion movie?
The Adventures of Prince Achmed was the first feature-length stop-motion animated movie, and it is also the oldest animated feature film in general.
This 1926 Lotte Reiniger film used meticulously cut silhouette figures shot against backlit glass panels. The technique is similar in style to shadow puppeteering, with the difference being her figures were animated frame by frame instead of being moved in live-action.
Fascinatingly, Reiniger also attempted to pioneer another aspect of filmmaking with Prince Achmed. She was one of the first filmmakers in the 20th century to try to include a queer romance in her film. However, her efforts to explicitly show the Emperor of China and a male character problematically named Ping Pong as gay lovers were censored in the theatrically released version of the film.
“I knew lots of homosexual men and women from the film and theatre world in Berlin,” Reiniger once said, “and saw how they suffered from stigmatization. I suspect that when the Emperor kisses Ping Pong, that must have been the first happy kiss between two men in the cinema.”
…and what about the highest-grossing stop-motion movie?
The highest-grossing stop-motion movie was released in 2000 and was made by Aardman Animation, the iconic animation studio known for creating Wallace and Gromit. It starred Mel Gibson as a heroic plasticine rooster who became the leader of a group of chickens on a Yorkshire farm who wanted to escape before they were turned into chicken pies.
The film, of course, was Chicken Run, and it banked an impressive $227 million at the worldwide box office.
The rest of the top ten highest-grossing stop-motion films are all efforts from the 2000s, like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Coraline, Corpse Bride, and The Boxtrolls. The sole movie from earlier than 2000, though, is 1993’s iconic The Nightmare Before Christmas, which you could probably argue is the most popular stop-motion animated movie ever made.
After all, Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s masterpiece has fostered a 30-year reputation as a cult classic beloved by everyone from families to goth kids to comic book geeks.
