page_title: The Sinking of the Lusitania
section_title: Reception and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: The Sinking of the Lusitania / Reception and legacy
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;William Randolph Hearst&#32;– American newspaper publisher
context_page_description: The Sinking of the Lusitania is an American silent animated short film by cartoonist Winsor McCay. It is a work of propaganda re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania. At twelve minutes it has been called the longest work of animation at the time of its release. The film is the earliest surviving animated documentary and serious, dramatic work of animation. The National Film Registry selected it for preservation in 2017.
  In 1915, a German submarine torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania; 128 Americans were among the 1,198 dead. The event outraged McCay, but the newspapers of his employer William Randolph Hearst downplayed the event, as Hearst was opposed to the U.S. joining World War I. McCay was required to illustrate anti-war and anti-British editorial cartoons for Hearst's papers. In 1916, McCay rebelled against his employer's stance and began work on the patriotic Sinking of the Lusitania on his own time with his own money.
  The film followed McCay's earlier successes in animation: Little Nemo, How a Mosquito Operates, and Gertie the Dinosaur.
context_section_description: The Sinking of the Lusitania was noted as a work of war propaganda, and is often called the longest work of animation of its time. The film is likely the earliest animated documentary. McCay's biographer, animator John Canemaker, called The Sinking of the Lusitania "a monumental work in the history of the animated film". Though it was admired by his animation contemporaries, Canemaker wrote that it "did not revolutionize the film cartoons of its time" as McCay's skills were beyond what animators of the time were able to follow. In the era that followed, animation studios made occasional non-fiction films, but most were comedic shorts lasting no more than seven minutes. Animation continued in its role of supporting feature films rather than as the main attraction, and rarely received reviews. Lusitania was not a commercial success; after a few years in theaters, Lusitania brought McCay about $80,000. McCay made at least seven further films, only three of which are known to have seen commercial release.
  After 1921, when Hearst learned McCay devoted more of his time to animation than to his newspaper illustrations, Hearst required McCay to give up animation. He had plans for several animation projects that never came to fruition, including a collaboration with Jungle Imps author George Randolph Chester, a musical film called The Barnyard Band, and a film about the Americans' role in World War I. Later in life, McCay at times publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the animation industry as it had become—he had envisioned animation as an art, and lamented how it had become a trade. According to Canemaker, it was not until Disney's feature films in the 1930s that the animation industry caught up with McCay's level of technique.
  Animation historian Paul Wells described Lusitania as "a seminal moment in the development of the animated film" for its combination of documentary style with propagandist elements, and considered it an example of animation as a form of Modernism. Steve Bottomore called the film "[t]he most significant cinematic version of the [Lusitania] disaster". A review in The Cinema praised the film, especially the scene in which the first torpedo explodes, which it called "more than reality". The National Film Registry selected the film for preservation in 2017.
caption: William Randolph Hearst curbed McCay's animation work to focus his employee on editorial cartooning.
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