Damon the Mower (1972)
Inspired by an Andrew Marvell poem, George Dunning sketched short phrases of animated movement on index cards, which were then stuck to a table top and filmed. Animation bared to the bone, and still extraordinary.
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Reviews
This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Overrated and overhyped
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
It's been at least twenty years since I last saw this little gem but hardly a week goes by when it doesn't pop up in my mind at some point. The other review dwells on the peculiar visual devices of the film that make it seem something like an animator's line-test from a dream. To the hypnotic rhythm of the flickering zoetrope-like "split-screen" imagery is added a very apt soundtrack of distant tolling bells, the soft (but menacing) repeating swish of a scythe, interjections of breathy whistling in homage to the wind through wheat stalks, the weightless calls of distant animals, and you have a beautifully-opaque enigmatic pastorale, exactly as I (mis?)remember it.
This is a brilliant hand drawn animated short. In Damon the Mower the title character is swinging his scythe and his figure is drawn in different positions so the scythe stays in the frame even when he moves it way to the left or right or above his head; so sometimes part of the character goes off the edge of the paper. The drawings are on small cards placed on a table to be photographed. The camera is framed wide enough to see several inches around the card, so when the framing of the action changes the card is moved frame by frame to see all of the action; so even though the card moves, the character stays in the same place. The drawings are sketchy and a little rough, but the effect is mesmerizing.