Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Animation
NORMAN McLAREN
b. Stirling, Scotland, 11 April 1914, d. 27 January 1987
Norman McLaren was one of the most innovative and
influential figures in animation. Throughout his life
McLaren worked in any number of techniques, including
painting, drawing, and scratching directly onto film;
pixellation (the frame-by-frame animation of staged
live-action movement); stop-motion chalk drawing; multiple
compositing; hand-drawn soundtracks; cut-outs; and 3D
object animation. Beyond the implicit influence of his work,
he also nurtured other artists, and maintained a pacifist,
left-wing, humanitarian agenda in his creative practice,
evidenced early in his student film, Hell UnLtd (1936).
Educated at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933, he
made his first experimental ‘‘cameraless’’ film in 1934, and
entered two films, Camera Makes Whoopee and Colour
Cocktail in the Glasgow Film Festival of 1936. Though he
believed the former to be his ‘‘calling card’’ to the creative
industries, it was the latter that impressed the
documentary filmmaker John Grierson, who invited
McLaren to work at the General Post Office (GPO) Film
Unit. Initially undertaking camerawork for Defence of
Madrid (1936), and later, encouraged by the new studio
head, Alberto Cavalcanti, he made Love on the Wing
(1938) and Many a Pickle (1938); the former was banned
by the postmaster for its use of phallic imagery. McLaren
was then invited by the Museum of Non-Objective
Painting, later the Guggenheim, in New York, to make a
range of abstract loops, including Allegro (1939) and Dots
(1940), though he managed also to make two other
personal films—Stars and Stripes (1939), which used the
US flag as its background, and an experimental electronic
work with Mary Ellen Bute, Spook Sport (1939).
By this time Grierson had moved on to establish the
National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and McLaren
form despite the critical and cultural attention enjoyed by
the Disney Studio with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
and Pinocchio (1940). Disney responded with Fantasia
(1941), which aspired to combine classical music with
lyrical animation in the same spirit as the abstract artists.
The mixed reception to Fantasia helped to establish the
sense of separatism between different kinds of animation,
a trend that has continued into the contemporary era.
joined him, becoming head of the newly formed
animation unit in 1943. Embracing the creative freedom
offered by the NFB, McLaren embarked on a career that
sought to advance animation as an art form, most notably
by drawing upon its relationship to dance in such films as
Blinkity Blank (1954) and Pas de Deux (1968), but also by
the imaginative use of sound—for example, in Begone Dull
Care (1949) and Synchromy (1971). McLaren’s desire to
transcend national and ethnic boundaries in his work, and
to ensure aesthetic, technical, and creative innovation,
meant that he used little dialogue, and employed
multilingual credits. Neighbours (1952), his famous
antiwar parable, not only redefined the cartoon, the
principles of live-action performance, and the use of
animation as a peacetime propaganda tool, but also
embodies the philosophic, imaginative, and humanitarian
heart of Norman McLaren’s vision.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Love on the Wing (1938), Hen Hop (1942), La Poulette Grise
(1947), Begone Dull Care (1949), A Phantasy (1952),
Neighbours (1952), Blinkity Blank (1954), The Crow
(1958), Pas de Deux (1968)
FURTHER READING
McLaren, Norman. The Drawings of Norman McLaren.
Montreal: Tundra Books, 1975.
Richard, Valliere T. Norman McLaren, Manipulator of
Movement: The National Film Board of Canada Years,
1947–1967. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1982.
Russett, Robert, and Cecile Starr. Experimental Animation:
Origins of a New Art. New York: Da Capo, 1988.
Wells, Paul. British Animation: A Critical Survey. London:
British Film Institute, 2006.
Paul Wells
Yet all animation is arguably ‘‘experimental’’ by virtue of
its aesthetic, technical, and cultural difference, even as it
finds continuing currency in mainstream culture. The
late Jules Engel (1909–2003), though ostensibly an
experimental filmmaker, worked on Disney features,
developed the characters of Gerald McBoing Boing and
Mr. Magoo at UPA, and worked on individual projects,
rejecting the false boundaries within the field.
94 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM