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Othello is one of a series of animated cartoon burlesques of Shakespeare plays that the pioneering British animator Anson Dyer made between 1919 and 1920 - the others being 'Amlet, Oh'phelia, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew.
Unlike Oh'phelia, Dyer's Othello only survives as a three-minute fragment, and that seems to consist of just the opening title sequence in which Othello applies his make-up and what one presumes is the closing reconciliation with Mona (her fashionable bob being applied to her full name as well as her hair).
As a result, it's virtually impossible to make any meaningful comment, except to note that the cut-out animation style is essentially identical to that in Oh'phelia, right down to the live-action intervention of the animator's hand at the start.
It is therefore probably safe to assume that the film as a whole consisted of a similar blend of vaguely Shakespeare-inspired visual and verbal puns, some genuinely witty, others decidedly groan-worthy, but the only written record appears to be from Bioscope, 29 July 1920, which describes "many humorous adventures in which the main parts of the famous tragedy are ingeniously if irreverently introduced".
Michael Brooke
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Surviving fragment (3:00)
