The Tale of the Ark (1909)

The earliest film about Noah and the flood is The Tale of the Ark (1909) by British animation pioneer Arthur Melbourne Cooper. It's currently available for free on BFIPlayer, in the UK at least, and seems to also have been circulated under the title Noah's Ark. I don't know much about Cooper, but he apparently learnt some of his skills from the legendary British cinema pioneer Birt Acres and while I'd love to get into all of that, I simply don't have the time at the moment. So I'll restrict myself to a few passing observations about the film itself.

The film begins with a young girl playing with a toy Noah's Ark, who soon tires and settles herself down for a nap. there's a cut, and the next shot is of the ark now resting on water, by grass. This is a charming framing device, which both contextualises this as a children's film (or at least one suitable for/aimed at children), while also putting it outside the scope of historical scrutiny. Years later another black and white film that featured Noah, The Green Pastures (1936) would employ a similar framing device.

The rest of the film is stop-motion animation. Plot-wise things are fairly straightforward. Noah opens the doors, the animals bring themselves on board, the rains comes forming a flood, then the water recedes and the animals disembark, but there are a number of nice touches here. Firstly while most of the animals file onto the ark fairly uniformly, the elephants provide a certain level of comedy, spinning and rolling about and heading off in different directions. This shows a level of advancement, of Cooper going beyond basic execution of a smoothly executed piece of animation, to include humour and give his characters personality.

Secondly I was struck by the way the waters gradually recede after the flood. I don't know whether the water was gradually drained off camera, or if it was gradually filled and the footage reversed, but again it perhaps could have been done with simple cuts but this seemed a superior approach.

Finally, Cooper again uses the elephants to lighten the tone and highlight his dexterity as an animator. When Noah and the animals disembark Noah lowers the ramp, but it's not placed quite right, at least, not for one of the elephants who uses their trunk to adjust it before going down. Again the fussiness / sense of  exasperatedly having to show Noah how to do it right is quite a complex thing to convey with animated figures.

For those wanting to read more about this film, David Shepherd wrote a paper on it for the Journal of Religion and Film back in 2016 called "Noah's Beasts  Were the Stars": Arthur Melbourne Cooper Noah’s Ark (1909)'.