User Reviews

This is another wild Koko The Clown silent cartoon from the genius of Max and Dave Fleischer. It's pretty good when you can still look innovative with animation almost 85 years later! This 1924 effort still is impressive.

I really liked Koko running the cartoon machine in which a landscape would be continuously drawn at the top of the page as the machine moved left to right. In fact, most of this cartoon had some very good artwork and, to me at least, I like to see Max's drawing done in higher speed. He's a real artist and you can see a lot of it here in this nine-minute short.

Mixed in, as is normal, is some real-life footage. In this cartoon, we get a toy soldier to turns real and begins to draw clones of himself on the walls of a house. The soldiers then attack Koko, who later fights back with a cannon that is drawn but has real-life artillery. As I said, these old silent cartoons were pretty clever.

With no music or voices, I guess you had to make up for it with some great visuals to keep the audience attentive. The Fleischer brothers usually succeeded in keeping peoples' interest in their work.

When Max Fleischer animates the production of cartoons using an electromechanical set-up, Koko retaliates by using a similar device to produce an endless supply of Maxes in this mind-bending cartoon.

That was the charm of the Fleischers' silent cartoons, existing half in the real world, where Max would draw Koko the clown, and half in the cartoon world, which would extend, as the demands of the cartoon dictated, in a dream logic of its own. Without the grounding of sound and voices, silent comedies could do this, both live and animated.

Cartoonist Max Fleischer uses electricity to create his drawings of Koko the Clown. This one has a bit of sound which is recorded afterwards. The sound quality is relatively poor but it exists nevertheless. The voices are mumbly at times. As for the real world soldier, I think it would be more cartoonish to have a cartoon soldier. It should be that or Koko could enter the real world. It's a little odd to have a real world soldier in the cartoon world.

Juxtaposing live action with animation is nearly as old as film animation itself. Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay interweaved live-action narratives about the animator with the animated cartoon. The next step was taken by John Randolph Bray, Walt Disney with his Alice's Wonderland series and the Fleischer Brothers, among others; they created films where the real, live-action world and the cartoon world interact. This particular Fleischer Brothers short, part of their Out of the Inkwell series, is notable for its play on the notion of creators and creations and for an exceptionally well executed version of the battle between creator and creation that usually occurred in the series.

"The Cartoon Factory" begins, as usual in the series, with Max Fleischer drawing Koko the Clown, who instantly comes to life. Max arbitrarily torments his creation for a while, but then Koko happens upon a drawing machine and shop--a cartoon factory--within the cartoon world, all of which can create live-action within the cartoon world (sometimes merely still photographs). In the Out of Inkwell series, it was the cartoon that usually entered the real universe. But no, here, Koko, who was originally modeled on Max (via Max's invention, the rotoscope, which was abandoned for a more cartoony Koko this episode), eventually creates a toy soldier, which comes to life as the live-action Max. Max sets about drawing subordinate toy soldiers, whom he orders to attack Koko.

This animation short features an especially clever exploration of the interactions between the universe of the creator and that of the creation. Koko the Clown was the Fleisher's first popular character, who in his later incarnations was often accompanied by Fitz the Dog, such as in the very inventive, apocalyptic "Ko-Ko's Earth Control" (1928). Koko isn't as well remembered as the Fleisher's later creations Betty Boop and Popeye, but with Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse, he was one of the first popular and sustained cartoon characters in film history. The interaction between creators and creations, however, were the lasting importance of the Out of the Inkwell series featuring Koko.

This was the first Koko the Clown cartoon I had seen, and I was mightily impressed. The Fleischers had a fairly wild imagination and put it to good use in films such as these in which Max Fleischer interacts with his creation. Their relationship seems to be an adversarial one, for no sooner has Max drawn Koko than he is tormenting him by wiring him to an electrical cable and zapping him with a few volts to make him run. The tables turn, however, when Koko stumbles upon the titular cartoon factory, and it's at this point that things start to get a little surreal. Koko uses the machine to create a toy soldier real-life version of Max and a house - so that, in effect, the cartoons are creating the real world. Koko bombards the toy soldier Max with cartoon cannonballs that become real when they hit their target, and Max responds by drawing an army of cartoon soldiers. The film grows increasingly insane - and more enjoyable - as it moves along, and leaves you wanting more because you feel as if these guys would never run out of wild ideas.

The version I saw was on a Retour de Flamme DVD and featured a synchronised soundtrack.

I watched this Max Fleischer/Out of the Inkwell short starring Koko the Clown on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. In this one, Max has Koko literally wired to do his will. Then, using an ink machine, Koko draws a chicken and a woman but the machine erases them both before he eats and kisses them, respectively. So he then goes to a factory and has a large soldier built that looks like Max inhabit his drawn-on-the-outside but photographed-on-the-inside house hoping to control him. But this "Max" then draws-via stop-motion-various soldiers to go after his creation...And so on, pretty amusing and the synchronization of the music and voices are almost perfect. Well worth a look for anyone curious about these silent films that happen to still exist despite the nitrate materials that the movies were printed on then.

Max Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. Fleischer may not be at his very finest and there are other cartoons of his that fit the word gem more. 'The Cartoon Factory' is still great though and for me one of the best Ko-Ko cartoons.

Sure, there is not much special or anything much for that matter to the story, which is generally best to be forgotten.

Everything else though is done so brilliantly that any issues had with the story don't stay for long.

One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly pretty good with some nice visual wackiness and wit.

'The Cartoon Factory' is lively in pace and the bizarre and wild nature of the humour is done very imaginatively and never less than fun to watch. The interplay with Max is a delight, the crew were clearly having a ball doing this, and Ko-Ko as always is amiable and amusing.

Altogether, great and one of Ko-Ko's best. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.

This is one of a ton of cartoons the Fleischer Brothers made starring Ko-Ko the Clown--their star before they began to specialize in Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons. Like the typical Ko-Ko film, it includes live action and cartoon--with Koko and other characters jumping in and out of the ink well. Quite enjoyable today but also not particularly good or bad compared to other Ko-Ko films.

By the way, this film and many of the other Ko-Ko films I've seen had sound effects and music added later. During the sound era, many silent cartoons like this one had this done in order to satisfy the increasing demand for sound.