Le Petit soldat qui devient Dieu (1908)

Le Petit soldat qui devient Dieu (The Little Soldier Who Became a God) is a silent short film released in 1908.  The film is directed by French caricaturist Émile Cohl but it's slightly different from his earlier animation films. This one has a proper storyline and does not merely show just transformation of objects by animating them. He has animated toy soldiers using stop motion animation to narrate the story along with live action.

The story in brief:

The film starts with two little girls playing with their dolls on a pavement outside a house. A lady comes and gives a tin box to one of the two girls. They peep at the content of the box but prefer to play with their hoops and leave the place keeping the tin box over a drawing copy. A soon as they leave, the lid of the box opens on it's own and we can see that it contains a number of toy soldiers inside. The box then moves to one side and the soldiers enter the scene marching from the right. The buildings drawn in the drawing copy serves as a backdrop and the soldiers seem to guard the buildings. Watch the film to see what the toy soldiers do in front of the buildings before they again get inside the tin box and get transported from the scene. One of the soldiers gets left behind. He then persues his own adventure through a waterway and finally gets rescued by a black tribal kid. The kid takes the soldier to the Chief of the tribe. Watch the film to see what happened next and how the solitary soldier gets reverred as a God by the tribe.

More info on Le Petit soldat qui devient Dieu and it's crew:

• Reviews and ratings of Le Petit soldat qui devient Dieu - IMDb
• Biography of the director Émile Cohl - Wikipedia

Animation Movies by Émile Cohl