Who's Afraid of Norman McLaren?

Three films by a misunderstood master.

Blinkity Blank (1955)

Happy Thursday! Today’s issue of Animation Obsessive covers one of the most important, influential and misunderstood animators of all time: Norman McLaren.

McLaren, who spent most of his career with the National Film Board of Canada, wasn’t part of the Disney line. Even in the ‘30s and ‘40s, his experiments led him to other styles. He drew characters directly on strips of film. He made abstract-expressionist paintings that shifted in time to jazz. He animated people like puppets.

For 50 years, up into the 1980s, McLaren broke ground. He was the world’s foremost experimental animator.

Yet his films rubbed (and still do rub) some people the wrong way. They saw this stuff as art for snobs: elitist, self-absorbed, smug and empty. The Oscar-winning cartoon The Critic (1963) sends up McLaren’s detractors, but also McLaren himself. It’s very funny — but was McLaren really that pretentious?

Thankfully, no. McLaren’s work may be strange, but its joys are straightforward, and they were meant to be. He loved movement. He loved to give people fresh, lively experiences. Sometimes, his films are meditative — other times, outright funny. But they’re always trying to connect. If you let them reach you, there’s much to gain.

To get a sense of McLaren’s work, and how it developed over time, we’re looking at three of his films from three different decades: the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. These pieces and the stories behind them reveal things about the possibilities of animation — and about their humble, eccentric creator.

Here we go!