Synopsis
Steamboat Willie (1928) is Walt Disney's animated short, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Eight minutes that, more or less, launched animation as we know it.
Mickey mans the wheel of a river steamboat and fancies himself the captain, whistling away until the real skipper sets him straight. Then the deck turns into a music hall: Mickey plays a cow, a goat and assorted barnyard animals like instruments to entertain Minnie. There is barely a plot. The whole point is how sound and motion locked together, frame for frame, for the first time.
Directed by Disney and animator Ub Iwerks, it was the first cartoon with a fully synchronized soundtrack, and it turned Mickey into a star overnight. Today it works as a museum piece, the seed of an entire studio and a slice of film history that rewards actually seeing it rather than just reading about it. Stream Steamboat Willie (1928) online on iFILM.
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