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This clip begins with the hand of the artist (Harry Julius) drawing seven animals including a bear, bulldog, turkey and daschund, which surround a title card ‘the war zoo’. Three of the animals are introduced through a brief sketch: ‘the weeping turk’ shows a battered and bruised turkey behind a fence being assaulted with boomerangs; ‘the kultur eagle’ shows a large bald eagle reluctantly sharing an enclosure with a peace dove; and ‘still king of them’ shows a pipe-smoking lion wearing a Royal Navy uniform bearing the St George’s Cross.
Julius regularly characterised the wartime countries as animals in editions of Cartoons of the Moment. The battered turkey (representing the Ottoman Empire) is the most pitiable of all, and is often depicted as a fez-capped turkey covered in bandaids and bruises. In this clip, the sign ‘do not throw boomerangs at the bird’ is a reference to Australian troops fighting the Turks.
Lauren Williams, curator
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This black-and-white clip of an animated cartoon shows warring nations of the First World War as animals. It opens with the artist sketching six animals as part of a title card. Three cartoon segments depict cut-out animals. A weeping injured turkey is hit by a boomerang. A sign warns ‘DO NOT THROW BOOMERANGS AT THE BIRD’. ‘THE KULTUR EAGLE’ of Germany curses the Allies for caging him with the dove of peace. Finally, a pipe-smoking lion in English naval uniform appears with a caption that reads ‘STILL KING OF THEM’.
This clip begins with a cartoon of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II surrounded by skulls. A caption illustrates the Kaiser’s thoughts, saying that while he wished to fight in the trenches, the almighty ‘willed it otherwise’. The hand of a skeleton then delivers the skull of a German soldier. The Kaiser sheds a tear but remains remorseless. Meanwhile, a suffragette from England attempts to persuade Mr Hughes to return to England, but he refuses.
The next section shows a man reading a newspaper with the war headline ‘great eclipse’. This is followed by a drawing in the shape of a sun filled with the head of a Kaiser Wilhelm II. He is then supplanted by the head of England’s King George V, captioned ‘The Allies’, on a circle that rolls across the screen to ‘eclipse’ the German sun.
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This black-and-white clip shows three animated Australian political cartoons created during the First World War. Cut-out animation with captions satirise Kaiser Wilhelm’s failure to take responsibility for the war dead represented by piles of skulls and crosses. The second sequence ‘Look out Billy’ shows the comical figure of a suffragette whose advances are rejected by prime minister Billy Hughes. The final cartoon shows the Sun with the face of Kaiser Wilhelm being eclipsed by the face of King George V.
This clip begins with the Cartoons of the Moment title card featuring a kangaroo and lion. Cartoonist Harry Julius is shown sketching at his notepad against an ocean background. A headline from the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger newspaper reads ‘Germany is willing to offer peace terms but the Allies keep attacking’. This is followed by the hand of the artist drawing Kaiser Wilhelm II holding tightly onto toys labelled with the names of European countries. The accompanying caption indicates he doesn’t want to give them back.
By representing the countries that Germany has invaded as Christmas presents, Julius cleverly distils a complex political situation into a single image. Captions are used to introduce the context and then make comment on the illustration. This has the effect of increasing its impact.
Lauren Williams, curator
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This black-and-white clip shows an animated political cartoon satirising German claims of how unfair it was that fighting in the First World War was continuing in spite of Germany having made a peace offer. The clip opens with the cartoon’s title card and footage of the cartoonist Harry Julius sketching. A hand writes the headline that provoked the cartoon and then the title of the cartoon, ‘THE HUN’S XMAS WAIL’. This is followed by a caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm portrayed as an outraged child clutching toys, the European nations Germany had invaded.
A large bear (representing the Russian forces) carrying a bayonet is accompanied by the caption: ‘I’m out to give Mr Turk a bad time’. In a boat landed nearby, the hand of the artist draws a fez-capped turkey (representing the Ottoman Empire). The turkey sheepishly emerges onto the land, hoping that the enemy is not around, only to find the large bear behind him.
Harry Julius often sketched animals in his Cartoons of the Moment series to represent the various countries involved in the First World War. The battered and bruised turkey (often depicted wearing a fez – a cone-shaped hat worn by members of the Ottoman Empire) appears most regularly in Julius’s cartoons, invariably in situations where it is shown to be the dogsbody of the German forces. The Russian bear, British lion, American eagle and German dachshund also appear throughout Julius’s sketches. This use of animals creates easily identifiable character stereotypes that are then employed to satirise some of the political predicaments of the First World War.
Lauren Williams, curator
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This black-and-white clip shows an animated cartoon using paper cut outs of animals to represent the two nations Turkey and Russia in order to comment satirically on an incident in the First World War. Speech balloons explain the action. The Russian bear, uniformed and with bayoneted rifle at the ready, advances across the screen. Next, the hand of the artist draws the fez-wearing turkey that has arrived in a boat hoping that the bear is not around, but the bear appears and chases the turkey off the screen.
This animated clip begins with a white outline, gradually drawn in by the hand of the artist to show a woman dressed in 19th-century costume. A caption says ‘since the Colonial days, skirts have gradually shrunk’. The cartoon is then blackened to shorten the woman’s dress until it shows the then current 1916 hemline between the knee and ankle. It continues to shorten as the next caption reads: ‘what will next year bring forth?’.
Unlike many of Harry Julius’s political sketches for Cartoons of the Moment, ‘The evolution of the skirt’ comments on the changing lengths of women’s hemlines since the 19th century. It uses Julius’s recognisable style to make a discreetly dressed woman’s skirt rise above her knees to reveal her thighs. Commenting on social customs and fashions of the time was not the staple for Julius’s Australasian Gazette sketches, but it does show his ability to satirise social as well as political subject matter. This cartoon is also interesting to consider in the light of women’s fashion in the 21st century – where hemlines have risen above the heights predicated here.
Lauren Williams, curator
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This black-and-white animated clip with captions comments on the changing length of women’s hemlines since the 19th century. The title ‘THE EVOLTION [sic] OF THE SKIRT’ appears before a white outline of a woman in full 19th-century costume. The cartoonist’s hand fills in details on the sketch before the white outline of a woman’s dress is blacked in to illustrate the steadily rising hemline over time. The hemline continues to ascend and a caption speculates on how far it will rise in the future.
This clip begins with the title card Cartoons of the Moment followed by a scene of cartoonist Harry Julius sketching at an easel. A group of children run up to him and watch as he sketches. The three animated political sketches that follow comment on the economy in Germany during the First World War.
In the first sketch, German policeman PC Von Fritz arrests a fashionably dressed woman and replaces her clothes with newspaper. In the second, a schoolmaster encourages his student to eat slowly so he’ll think it is a lot of food. Finally, in the third sketch, PC Von Fritz is shown eating a shoe, a jam tin and ‘humble pie’ from John Bull.
This sketch is representative of the style and tone of cartoonist Harry Julius’s political satire. Julius uses caricature and word play to ridicule the German police and authority figures and to comment on the social impact of the war in German society. The German economy suffered greatly during the First World War, with billions of dollars poured into the war effort. What the sketch cleverly points out is that the effect of this is not just economic, but also social. ‘Economy’ in this sketch highlights another common meaning of the word – to be frugal. Julius’s cartoon takes this to the extreme by sketching a woman dressed in newspaper clothes, and a boy who is told to eat slowly as a substitute for eating a lot. The punchline comes when Julius sketches PC Von Fritz literally eating a humble pie prepared by John Bull – a name that represents a typical Englishman.
Julius is often shown sitting at his desk reading a current newspaper before sketching down his ideas. Sometimes he is filmed in an exterior location standing at an easel before the action focuses on the hand of the artist and his resulting cartoon. Julius’s drawn animation uses two-dimensional cut-out character shapes photographed with a stop-motion technique. Today, animation is instead frequently rendered with computer technology.
Lauren Williams, curator
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This black-and-white sequence of three cartoons uses cut-out figures, simple animation and captions to comment on Germany’s struggling wartime economy. The clip is introduced by the title ‘Cartoons of the Moment’ and a scene of Harry Julius drawing at an easel on the beach with children watching. The cartoons show first an overdressed woman whose clothes are replaced by paper clothing, then a teacher instructing a student in food mastication drill followed by Fritz eating a shoe, a jam tin and, finally, humble pie from John Bull.
In this edition of Cartoons of the Moment, cartoonist Harry Julius comments on the war in Europe and Australian Prime Minister Hughes’s policy of restrictions on trade with Germany.
Cartoons of the Moment was a weekly political cartoon segment that screened in the Australasian Gazette newsreel from around 1914 to 1918. From 1916, the segment supported Prime Minister William (Billy) Hughes’s push for conscription and his other causes including enforced restrictions on German trade. Julius drew several sketches about the latter, including Australia’s Prime Minister Delights at the Empire (clip one), Miss Australasia and Sir George and Saint George.
Cut-out animation and stop-motion photography is used to great effect in these early examples of Australian animated cartoons. In clip one, Billy Hughes’s hat flips open to deliver two characters: a man representing German trade and a mini-version of Hughes delivering a knockout blow to the former. The animation is simple, but effective, and is representative of the style adopted by Julius throughout the Cartoons of the Moment series.
Lauren Williams, curator
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1 (Academy full frame)
Original censorship rating: not rated
Production company | Australasian Films |
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Cinesound-Movietone Productions owns all copyright which may subsist in this footage.