Norman McLaren

The Scottish born, Canadian filmmaker and animator Norman McLaren (1914-1987) discovered cinema at the Glasgow School of Art. Initially he was influenced by Eisenstein. At some point he was introduced to the work of Osker Fishinger who produced abstract animations and the work of Claire Parker and Alexander Alexeieff and Émile Cohl. Parker, Alexeieff and Cohl used an animation technique called metamorphosis. I am not quite describing the technique correctly. I will have to consult Paul Well’s book Understanding Animation. This technique was developed further and employed by McLaren in a number of his experimental animations.

I particularly interested in its application within the mode of representation of surrealism. A great deal of McLaren’s work was informed by surrealist techniques.





Above are two stills from A phantasy on a nineteenth century painting (1946) which was inspired by the painting series Isle of the Dead (1880- 86) by Arnold Böcklin