“The animalist films allow Machin to avoid or limit the logics of editing, which had become fundamental in the cinema of the 1920s. In fact, since the depiction of a goose or a hen did not lend themselves to long shots or complicated laying out of the scenes, the sequences are obligatorily brief (explicit and narrative titles are most abundant), so producing a rhythm which is much more suitable to the tastes of the epoque. I would not hazard to say that such a strategy was conscious; let’s just say that it is derived automatically from the choice of subject”. (Eric de Kuyper)