‘This new mode of expression’: The idea of animation in 1930s France

In France during the 1930s, the popular press and film journals offered a lively and multifaceted discussion of animation. This article examines how, within this discourse, animation was envisioned as a new form of art with its own expressive potentials. It traces how ideas of the form were articulated in terms of animation aesthetics, animation’s relationship to other artistic and cultural forms, and animation’s history. Developing an approach to animation history that focuses on its reception and discourse, this article elaborates on the cultural formation of an idea of animation.