Making a film, even of only a few minutes, entirely by stop-motion animation with puppets replicating insects (which I think is how he did it) must be exceedingly assiduous; to have done so in 1912 is astounding. Wladyslaw Starewicz (later in France, Ladislas Starewitch) deserves plenty of praise for such innovation, but the marvelous aspect of "The Cameraman's Revenge" is that he aggrandizes upon that with a narrative of burlesque, which is both entertaining and clever.
The stop-motion animation is seamless compared to contemporaneous or even later efforts by others. The insect puppets, as well as the small-scale sets, display great care and detail. One becomes enveloped in the insects' world. Only a long shot, from a human's eye view above, of the grasshopper cameraman on his bicycle following Mr. Beetle and the dragonfly in a car puts the story in proper perspective--further highlighting the absurd hilarity of the happenings. The burlesque is, after all, on us. The insects play out a parody of human follies, caricaturing us in detail.
Furthermore, the burlesque is cleverly self-referential; the joke is also on film and filmmakers. Movies typically depict human dramas in deceptively realistic light. You could say Starewicz attempted the same thing, except he replaced human actors with insect replicas. This is clear by the grasshopper as a motion-picture cameraman, who documents the affair between Mr. Beetle and the dragonfly and later screens this film within a film at an open-air cinema attended by both Mr. and Mrs. Beetle. This frames the narrative and bounds the film's metaphysics. By 1912 no less, Starewicz is playing around with notions of what cinema is: is it a medium for documenting real events, an insight into human nature, or whatnot; he clearly believed it is fantasy.
The stop-motion animation is seamless compared to contemporaneous or even later efforts by others. The insect puppets, as well as the small-scale sets, display great care and detail. One becomes enveloped in the insects' world. Only a long shot, from a human's eye view above, of the grasshopper cameraman on his bicycle following Mr. Beetle and the dragonfly in a car puts the story in proper perspective--further highlighting the absurd hilarity of the happenings. The burlesque is, after all, on us. The insects play out a parody of human follies, caricaturing us in detail.
Furthermore, the burlesque is cleverly self-referential; the joke is also on film and filmmakers. Movies typically depict human dramas in deceptively realistic light. You could say Starewicz attempted the same thing, except he replaced human actors with insect replicas. This is clear by the grasshopper as a motion-picture cameraman, who documents the affair between Mr. Beetle and the dragonfly and later screens this film within a film at an open-air cinema attended by both Mr. and Mrs. Beetle. This frames the narrative and bounds the film's metaphysics. By 1912 no less, Starewicz is playing around with notions of what cinema is: is it a medium for documenting real events, an insight into human nature, or whatnot; he clearly believed it is fantasy.