1923 cartoon short of famous silent-era character Felix the Cat. I picked this one to watch as part of my centenarian films project mostly because it features prominent figures from the emerging cinema industry at the time: Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille... who've directed other 1923 films on my watchlist.
The short is kind of silly and random but I liked it! The story starts with a starving1 artist who doesn't find success in theater and is forced to try his luck in Hollywood ("I'll have to sacrifice my art and go to the movies"). Film was seen as an inferior form of art (still is, by some), and in some way it was—it would be six more years until the Oscars were introduced, a major turning point in recognizing artistic merit in film.
You can stream/download the short on archive.org.
6/10 literally ↩Footnotes