everything is said the history of this film. I myself was amazed about the colors and the drawing; it is so delicate and fragile. if the speed is clumsy, it is not adequate to comping to future animation films. I thin this film was something that people who saw it back 1900s found it fresh and invigorating.

Like I said in title of this review, this seems to be oldest available cartoon now. We have one which is older but it is lost film (Le Clown et ses chiens). This film was a part of Pantomimes Lumineuses which consist three movies created by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Film probably doesn't deserve this rate, but I increase my rate because of funny music. Sad thing is that inventor of animated movie die penniless, like many other inventors in history. And second sad thing is that before he dies, he throw away all of his work into river and that is a reason that 2 of 3 his movies from Pantomimes Lumineuses are considered as lost films.

If I had watched this short movie, I'd never have thought that it comes from the year 1892. I've seen way worse animation from 75 years later. It's just so different than everything else that was shot before it. It's considerably longer and people must have reacted with surprise when they held a colorful drawing in their hands and then they see something quite similar moving and telling a story.All the characters are nicely animated, especially their dresses, gestures and face expressions. It's the funny story of a girl between two men. The fact that they all look a lot like ghosts was possibly not intended, but fits the whole moonlight setting nicely. Which is the right one for her? Go see for yourself.

Charles-Émile Reynaud deserves credit as the inventor of the animated cartoon. Unfortunately, he was a poor businessman, and his artistic innovations outstripped the technical hardware which he invented to exhibit them. Reynaud died penniless in a Val-de-Marne hospice. A few years before he died, embittered, he took most of his animated films -- too deteriorated to be restored yet again -- and flung them off Pont Saint-Michel into the Seine. I am reluctant to describe any movie as 'lost' unless it was deliberately destroyed, since many early films which some expert described as 'lost forever' have returned from the dead. Sadly, it does appear that the most of the cartoons drawn and produced by Reynaud -- each running 15 minutes or less -- are, indeed, lost.Reynaud's first innovation was to adapt the zoetrope -- basically a toy -- into the more sophisticated praxinoscope. This placed a series of drawings on the inside of a cylinder, with a mirror at the centre. As the cylinder revolved, an onlooker -- viewing the mirror through a slit -- would see the drawings as a continuous moving image, courtesy of the same optical illusion (persistence of vision) now exploited by modern films. But the length of the 'story' told by a praxinoscope was limited to the number of images which could be displayed within the cylinder's finite diameter. Usually, a praxinoscope's drawings depicted a single event happening over and over (with each circuit of the cylinder).Reynaud's next innovation was to devise a much longer filmstrip, which -- with sprocket holes -- could be fed into and out of the praxinoscope so as to display a much longer sequence of images. A dedicated artist, Reynaud painted his drawings in bright elaborate colours, and affixed them to the transparent filmstrip via a flexible clear gelatin. Unfortunately, Reynaud's technical innovations did not allow for the permanence of his art. As the gelatin aged, it hardened and cracked while turning opaque. The heat of his projection lamp corrupted the delicate colours of his images. The sprocket holes tore easily. The very act of projecting his filmstrips contributed to their destruction. This seems to have been the single greatest reason for Reynaud's commercial failure: the tremendous amount of labour, time and money expended on creating one of his filmstrips could not be recouped in the very small number of projections (for paying audiences) which it would sustain before deteriorating.'Poor Pierrot', running slightly less than 15 minutes, is a fairly conventional harlequinade. In a garden lit by a crescent moon, the rivals Pierrot and Harlequin vie for the love of the fair Columbine. Harlequin has a baton, which he uses to frighten Pierrot and chase him away. End of story.The great appeal of Reynaud's films was in their novelty (which nowadays can only be estimated) and their visual beauty (for which we have little surviving evidence) rather than in their (necessarily) extremely simple stories. Consequently, I shan't hazard a guess as to a quantified rating of his films' worthiness. Instead of rating 'Poor Pierrot' on a scale of one to 10, I'll lament the deterioration of Reynaud's films and his final embittered act of destroying most of their surviving remnants. Better grease up the time machine, set it for 1910, and rescue those strips which Reynaud threw from the Saint Michel Bridge.