Felix The Cat by Otto Messmer

Felix The Cat goes Dutch in Two-Lip Time (1926), a classic cartoon by the incomparable Otto Messmer. I have also heard that early animation stalwarts Bill Nolan and Raoul Barré worked on this cartoon (if any of you experts and historians out there in cyberspace can confirm or deny this, by all means leave a comment).

The silent Felix series manages to be simultaneously cartoony, minimalistic and otherworldly. And they still deliver the goods with audiences - I've witnessed this first hand. While the subsequent retirement in 1927 of pioneering animator Raoul Barré couldn't have helped matters for the Pat Sullivan Studio, the series nonetheless continued its winning streak.



Messmer only got credit for his amazing work in animation many decades after Felix' heydey as an international star, as booked in the movie theatres around the world as Rudolf Valentino.

Here's a clip from Jane Canemaker's interview with the legendary animator in his documentary Otto Messmer & Felix The Cat.