Peter's Picture Poems
A star-spangled sock on the nose for Kaiser Wilhelm, as this wordplay propaganda cartoon meets war crimes with pun-ishment
There's propagandistic punning aplenty in this WWI animated short. Turning "RUSSIA" into "U ASS" might not be the most sophisticated humour, but you can bet it got a laugh out of contemporary cinema audiences tired of three years of war. Director and animator Anson Dyer had moved into film early in 1915 after having trained as a stained glass artist, and would become a leading figure of British animation into the 1940s.
Animated illustration of verses by a poet called Peter including one in which
the Kaiser tries to turn Russia into Prussia - but the US intervenes.
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The First World War: Drawing the Enemy
Britain's cartoonists take up their brushes to confront the Kaiser and his armies.
As the First World War raged across Europe, Britain's animators dedicated themselves to the propaganda effort. These determined artists, among them Lancelot Speed, Dudley Buxton, GW Studdy and Anson Dyer, unleashed an arsenal of tricks with one objective - making the enemy look ridiculous, and victory seem inevitable.
In cartoon after cartoon, lightning sketch after lightning sketch, the elaborately-moustached 'Kaiser Bill' was subjected to a catalogue of indignities, whether at the hands of 'Tommy', 'John Bull' and their allies, or just falling victim to his own hubris.
15 videos in this collection
1
2
Sea Dreams
3
Sleepless
4
Peter's Picture Poems
5
John Bull's Animated Sketchbook No. 4
6
John Bull's Sketch Book
7
John Bull's Animated Sketch Book
8
Bully Boy
9
Anti-German War Cartoons
10
A Pencil and Alick P.F. Ritchie
11
First World War Cartoon - Joffre
12
Studdy's War Cartoons Compilation Film
13
Tom Merry, Lightning Cartoonist, Sketching Kaiser Wilhelm II
14
Agitated Adverts
15