How A Mosquito Operates - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

The film opened to large audiences and was well received. The Detroit Times wrote of audiences laughing until they cried, and that they "went home feeling that had seen one of the best programs" in the theater's history. The paper called the film "a marvelous arrangement of colored drawings", referring to the final explosive sequence, which McCay had hand-painted red. The New York newspaper The Morning Telegraph remarked, " moving pictures of his drawings have caused even film magnates to marvel at their cleverness and humor." In interviews, McCay talked of the potential the new animated film medium had for "serious and educational work", and hinted at the subject of his next work, Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).

Animator John Randolph Bray's first film, The Artist's Dream, appeared in 1913; it alternates live-action and animated sequences, and has a dog which explodes after eating too many sausages. Though these aspects are reminiscent of McCay's first two films, Bray stated he was not aware of McCay's films when he was working on The Artist's Dream.

Following Mosquito, animation became story-based, and for decades rarely drew attention to the technology behind it; live action sequences also became infrequent. The technical quality of McCay's animation was so far ahead of its time that it was not matched until the Disney studios gained prominence in the 1930s with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. McCay's biographer, animator John Canemaker, commended McCay for his ability to imbue the mosquito with character and a personality.