Émile Cohl
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
caricaturist of the largely forgotten Incoherent Movement
Incoherents
The Incoherents was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence anticipated many of the art techniques and attitudes later associated with avant-garde and anti-art.Lévy coined the phrase "les arts incohérents" as...
, cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
, and animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, called "The Father of the Animated Cartoon" and "The Oldest Parisian".
Biography
Émile's father Elie was a rubber salesman, and his mother, Emilie Laure, was a linen seamstress. The rubber factory Elie worked for had many ups and downs, causing the family to move from one home in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to another.
Early years
Émile saw little of his father during his childhood, and was over-protected by his ailing mother until her death in 1863. In 1864, at the age of 7, he was enrolled at the Ecole professionnelle de Pantin, a boarding school known as the Institute Vaudron after its founder. There his artistic talents were discovered and encouraged. The next year, a cold kept him in his father's apartment, where he began stamp collectingStamp collecting
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with the number of collectors in the United States alone estimated to be over 20 million.- Collecting :...
, a hobby that would become his sole source of income several times in his life.
The chaos caused by the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
and the following siege of Paris led to the closing of Elie Courtet's factory. Émile was transferred to the less-exclusive Ecole Turgot, but his lessons were soon forgotten as the teenager wandered the streets of Paris to watch history being made. He made two discoveries that in time that became the controlling elements of his life: Guignol
Guignol
Guignol is the main character in a French puppet show which has come to bear his name.Although often thought of as children's entertainment, Guignol's sharp wit and linguistic verve have always been appreciated by adults as well, as shown by the motto of a prominent Lyon troupe: "Guignol amuses...
puppet theater and political caricature. Guignol was a form of drama (usually involving love triangles) where the characters were played by marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
s. A subtype of the Guignol was Fantoche, a form of puppetry where the puppeteer's head was stuck through a hole in a black sheet with a small puppet body underneath.
Political caricature had begun in France during the Second Empire, but had been suppressed by Napoleon III. During the free-for-all weeks of the Commune (all eleven of them), the caricaturists were free to post broadsheets on the streets for all to see. The center of this activity was the Rue du Croissant, only blocks from the Ecole Turgot.
In 1872, Elie Courtet placed his 15-year-old son in a three-year apprenticeship with a jeweler. Émile drew caricatures, enlisted in the Cherbourg regiment, and drew some more. Elie placed him with a maritime insurance broker. Émile left the broker, got a much poorer-paying job with a philatelist and declared his preference for drawing, the Bohemian lifestyle
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, and if necessary, going hungry.
Years with André Gill
In 1878, Émile obtained a letter of recommendation from Étienne CarjatÉtienne Carjat
Étienne Carjat , was a French journalist, caricaturist and photographer. He co-founded the magazine, Le Diogène, and founded the review, Le Boulevard...
to approach André Gill
André Gill
André Gill was a French caricaturist. Born Louis-Alexandre Gosset de Guînes at Paris, the son of the Comte de Guînes and Sylvie-Adeline Gosset, he studied at this city's Academy of Fine Arts. He adopted the pseudonym André Gill in homage to his hero, James Gillray. Gill began illustrating for...
, the best-known caricaturist of the day, for a job. Gill had made his fame a decade earlier by publishing La Lune, a periodical critical of Napoleon III. His presses were smashed and he was incarcerated. He started La Lune Rousse in 1876 to continue his work. By this time, he had moved beyond attacking individuals to making observations on the ludicrousness of conformist bourgeois values in general. However, the government was becoming increasingly liberal, leaving him with few big-name targets. As a result, La Lune Rousse closed in 1879.
Émile Courtet's job as one of several assistants to Gill was to complete the backgrounds; he may have done a few of the illustrations by himself. During this process, the young man developed a style of caricature based on Gill's. Gill's trademark was the large, recognizable head of the target (with a fairly benign expression) atop a small puppet body (doing something ridiculous). Clearly, it was based on Fantoche puppetry. Émile took this style and added touches to suggest movement and imagery from the rest of Guignol puppetry. At about this time he adopted the pseudonym of Émile Cohl. The meaning of "Cohl" is obscure: it may be from the pigment known as "kohl", or perhaps it means that Émile stuck to his mentor Gill like glue ("colle" in French). Perhaps it was chosen because it sounded exotic. The visual signature of a paste-pot appears in a few of Cohl's caricatures.
Thiers was succeeded as president by Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta
Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta
Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de Mac-Mahon, 1st Duke of Magenta was a French general and politician with the distinction Marshal of France. He served as Chief of State of France from 1873 to 1875 and as the first president of the Third Republic, from 1875 to 1879.-Early life:Born in Sully , in the...
, a conservative monarchist who had been at Sedan. He became steadily less popular under the assault of caricatures. One of these, "Aveugle par Ac-Sedan", a French pun on "accidentally blind" and "Bungler at Sedan", put its creator, Émile Cohl, in jail on October 11, 1879, making him instantly famous. Three months later, MacMahon resigned in disgrace—the caricaturists liked to believe that they were responsible. He was succeeded by Jules Grévy
Jules Grévy
François Paul Jules Grévy was a President of the French Third Republic and one of the leaders of the Opportunist Republicans faction. Given that his predecessors were monarchists who tried without success to restore the French monarchy, Grévy is seen as the first real republican President of...
, who transferred real power from the post of president to the prime minister and legislature. This led to a period of internal stability and prosperity for France.
Through Gill, Cohl had become acquainted with an artistic circle calling themselves the Hydropathes. The group was united by various "modern" ideas and a love of poetry. The group, like many others of the time, based most of their activities on shocking people. As a result of his new-found fame, Cohl was named editor of the group's spokes-piece, L'Hydropathe, on October 28, 1879. At about this time Émile's estranged father died, leaving him a modest legacy. Émile Cohl set out to discover his abilities, writing and producing two satiric plays that did very poorly. The co-author of both plays was Norés (pseudonym of Edouard Norés), an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
who had been an architect before giving up his former life for Bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
on the banks of the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
. Besides a strong friendship, Norés taught Cohl English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, a useful skill later on.
End of the Hydropathes
Émile Cohl married on November 12, 1881; his wife later left him for an author. At the same time, André Gill was committed to the Charenton mental asylumCharenton (asylum)
Charenton was a lunatic asylum, founded in 1645 by the Frères de la Charité in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, now Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne, France....
. He managed to recover in a few months and in 1882 submitted his first serious painting, "Le Fou" (The Madman) to the Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
. The painting's poor reception by the artists of the Salon sent him back to Charenton.
Meanwhile, the Hydropathes had disbanded in 1882. Their place in Cohl's life was replaced by the Incoherents
Incoherents
The Incoherents was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence anticipated many of the art techniques and attitudes later associated with avant-garde and anti-art.Lévy coined the phrase "les arts incohérents" as...
. The group was founded by Jules Lévy, who coined the phrase "les arts incohérents" as a contrast to the common expression "les arts décoratifs". The Incoherents were even less politically minded than the Hydropathes. Their slogan was "Gaity is properly French, so let's be French". The focus was absurdism
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
, nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
s, and the drawing style of child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren. Cohl's Incoherent art joined his caricatures and satiric news reporting at La Nouvelle Lune, where he had become the major contributor and acting editor. He became editor in chief on November 30, 1883.
By November 1883, the Incoherents
Incoherents
The Incoherents was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence anticipated many of the art techniques and attitudes later associated with avant-garde and anti-art.Lévy coined the phrase "les arts incohérents" as...
had become so big that an exhibit was arranged at the Vivienne Gallery, open to the public. It was called "an exhibition of drawings by people who do not know how to draw." Émile Cohl's contribution was titled Portrait garanti ressemblant (Portrait—Resemblance Guaranteed). The exhibit accepted any and all entries, so long as they were not obscene or serious. The public was taken with the show, and the profits were donated to public assistance. There was a second show in 1884, and the 1885 show was replaced by a masked ball (Cohl went as an artichoke
Artichoke
-Plants:* Globe artichoke, a partially edible perennial thistle originating in southern Europe around the Mediterranean* Jerusalem artichoke, a species of sunflower with an edible tuber...
). In 1886, Cohl produced his most bizarre and characteristic work in the Incoherent vein: Abus des metaphors, a collection of more than a dozen colorful expressions brought to life.
Death of André Gill
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
, 1885, with only Cohl by his side. Cohl never forgot Gill's desertion by his friends and the public. The Incoherent
Incoherents
The Incoherents was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence anticipated many of the art techniques and attitudes later associated with avant-garde and anti-art.Lévy coined the phrase "les arts incohérents" as...
movement collapsed in 1888.
After the collapse of his marriage, Cohl moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to work for Pick Me Up, a humor magazine that specialized in French artists (he left his long-standing second job as a philatelist at this time). He returned to Paris in June 1896 and married Suzanne Delpy, the daughter of one of André Gill's followers. Their son André Jean was born on November 8, 1899. By this time, Cohl had moved away from caricature, sending humorous drawings to bicycle magazines, family magazines, and children's magazines. He also wrote articles on French history, stamps, and fishing. In July 1898 he started contributing to L'Illustré National. This would be the origin of Cohl's comic strips. At the same time, Cohl's art moved from scene-setting to story-telling, and from the Gill fantoche style to Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
. Other interests during this period included puzzles, toys (he invented a few new ones), and drawings of figures made from wax matches. In the political arena, he submitted anti-Dreyfus
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
illustrations to La Libre Parole Illustrée.
Motion pictures
By 1907, the 50-year-old Émile Cohl, like everyone else in Paris, had become aware of motion pictures. How he actually entered the business is shrouded in legend. According to Jean-Georges Auriol in a book of 1930, one day Cohl was walking down the street when he spotted a poster advertising a movie obviously stolen from one of his strips. Outraged, he confronted the manager of the offending studio (GaumontGaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....
) and was hired on the spot as a scenarist (responsible for one-page story ideas for movies). The story is rather doubtful in the detail of which strip and which short film; it is also possible that the story is completely false, and that Cohl was approached for the job, either by director Etienne Arnaud or by artistic director Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
, both of whom had once worked for caricature papers and therefore could be expected to know Cohl by reputation if not personally.
At Gaumont, Cohl collaborated with the other directors whenever possible, learning cinematography from Arnaud and directing chases, comedies, féeries ("fairy pieces"), and pageants. But his specialty was animation. He worked in a corner of the studio with a vertically mounted Gaumont camera and a single assistant to operate it. He turned out four sequences a month for insertion in mostly live action films. Studio director Léon Gaumont
Léon Gaumont
Léon Gaumont was a French inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture industry....
, in one of his visits, dubbed him "the Benedictine".
The idea for doing animation was born from the huge success of the film "The Haunted Hotel", released by Vitagraph
Vitagraph Studios
American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...
and directed by J. Stuart Blackton
J. Stuart Blackton
James Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation...
. It premiered in Paris in April 1907 and immediately there was a demand for more films using its incredible object animation techniques. According to a story told by Arnaud in 1922, Gaumont had ordered his staff to figure out the "mystery of 'The Haunted Hotel'." Cohl studied the film frame by frame, and in this way discovered the techniques of animation. It should be noted that Cohl, who was always seeking to enlarge his reputation in later life, never corroborated this story. Also, there were a fair number of films released before 1907 with stop-motion and/or drawn animation in them, by Blackton and others, any one of which could have taught Cohl animation, if he didn't just work the technique out on his own. The only reason "The Haunted Hotel" is significant is the fact that it was popular enough to make the arduous work of animation profitable.
Cohl made "Fantasmagorie
Fantasmagorie (1908 film)
Fantasmagorie is an 1908 French animated film by Émile Cohl. It is one of the earliest examples of traditional animation, and considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon.-Description:...
" from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed (animated "on twos"), leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a "stream of consciousness" style. It borrowed from Blackton in using a "chalk-line effect" (filming black lines on white paper, then reversing the negative to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard), having the main character drawn by the artist's hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is a silent cartoon by J. Stuart Blackton released in 1906. It features a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces coming to life. It is generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film. It features movements as where a dog jumps through...
"). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.
"Fantasmagorie" was released on August 17, 1908. This was followed by two more films, "Le Cauchemar du fantoche" ["The Puppet's Nightmare", now lost] and "Un Drame chez les fantoches" ["A Puppet Drama", called "The Love Affair in Toyland" for American release and "Mystical Love-Making" for British release], all completed in 1908. These three films are united by their chalk-line style, the stick-figure clown protagonists, and the constant transformations. Cohl made the plots of these films up as he was filming them. He would put a drawing on the lightbox, photograph it, trace onto next sheet with slight changes, photograph that, and so on. This meant that the pictures did not jitter and the plot was spontaneous. Cohl had to calculate the timing in advance. The process was demanding and time-consuming, which is probably why he moved away from drawn animation after "Un Drame chez les fantoches".
The rest of the films Cohl made for Gaumont involve strange transformations ("Les Joyeaux Microbes" ["The Joyous Microbes", aka "The Merry Microbes" (UK)] (1909)), some great matte effects ("Clair de lune espagnol" ["Spanish Moonlight", aka "The Man in the Moon" (US), aka "The Moon-Struck Matador" (UK)] (1909)), and loving puppet animation ("Le Tout Petit Faust" ["The Little Faust", aka "The Beautiful Margaret" (US)] (1910)). Other films used jointed cut-outs or animated matches (the later an especial favorite of Cohl).
In his lifetime, Cohl's most famous film was Le Peintre néo-impressionniste ["The Neo-Impressionistic Painter"], made in 1910. An artist is sketching a classically draped model holding a broom as a stick-figure when a collector storms in demanding to know the progress of his work. The artist shows the collector a series of blank colored canvases (the film is color-tinted). As he gives their ridiculous titles, the collector imagines them being drawn on the canvas. For example, the red canvas is "a cardinal eating lobster with tomatoes by the banks of the Red Sea". The collector is soon so delirious that he buys every blank canvas he can see. Quite obviously, the artist is not a neo-Impressionist (the name taken from the latest vogue in Paris)--he's an Incoherent.
The Cohl animated films had a large impact through their American distribution by Kleine. Many of them received rave reviews in the trade magazines, although Cohl was only identified as "Gaumont's animator". It was probably in response to "Fantasmagorie" that Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades...
made Little Nemo
Little Nemo
Little Nemo is the main fictional character in a series of weekly comic strips by Winsor McCay that appeared in the New York Herald and William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspapers from October 15, 1905 – April 23, 1911 and April 30, 1911 – July 26, 1914; respectively.The...
(1911). Motifs of Cohl's can be found in Little Nemo and later films by McCay: the dots coalescing into Little Nemo reflect effects in Un Drame chez les fantoches and Les Joyeaux Microbes; the metamorphosis of the rose into the Princess may have been inspired by Fantasmagorie; the titular character of The Story of a Mosquito (1912) sharpening his beak comes from Un Drame chez les fantoches; the live-action/animation interaction of McCay throwing a pumpkin to Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality...
(1914) may have been an answer to the matador hurling his hatchet at the moon in "Clair de lune espagnol". But if there were borrowings of Cohl by McCay, there was also a wealth of style and spirit in McCay's films that were uniquely his own.
On November 30, 1910, Cohl left Gaumont for Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
, probably for more money. He made only two animated films before being forced into exclusively live-action work as a director of burlesques starring Jobard (Lucien Cazalis), one of the first generation of great screen comics. Cohl made ten Jobard films between March and May 1911 before leaving for a vacation. Apparently, one of these films was the origin of pixilation
Pixilation
Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet...
, the technique of applying stop-motion to human beings.
One of those two animated films was "Le Ratapeur de cervelles" ["Brains Repaired"], which is a re-hash of "Les Joyeaux Microbes" using a mental disease. The transformations here are some of the most remarkable (and non-sensical) of Cohl's career: as two men shake hands in profile, their heads expand into huge crossed bird beaks, filling the screen in a zoom until only their shared eye is seen, which itself expands into a bellows. The other film, "La Revanche des espirits" [The Spirit's Revenge] (now lost) may have been the first film to combine live-action and animation by drawing directly on the live-action film (previous work had used mattes exclusively).
In July 1911, Émile Cohl learned that his estranged daughter Andrée had died in an auto accident. Dissatisfied with Pathé and too proud to return to Gaumont, Cohl signed with Eclipse in September. None of Cohl's Eclipse films have survived, so little is known of his work there—it appeared to consist of object animation and travelogues. The Eclipse contract was not exclusive, so Cohl made films for other studios. One of these films, "Campbell Soups", was his first film made for Éclair, the Number Three studio in France.
After the turn of the century many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 35,345. Located atop the Hudson Palisades, the borough is the western terminus of the George Washington Bridge...
. Éclair's American studio was run by Cohl's friend Arnaud. As Éclair was moving into comedies for American audiences, it was not too hard for Arnaud to have his friend sent over the Atlantic to join him. Émile, his wife Suzanne, and their son André sailed first class from La Havre to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. At Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
, he was required, for "sanitary reasons", to shave off the mustache he had worn for thirty years in honor of André Gill.
Despite the inevitable xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
from the locals, the French colony at Fort Lee was enthusiastic about finally invading the coveted American market. Cohl bought a house and settled into a typical middle-class American lifestyle. He had a considerable advantage over fellow-Éclair employees, as he was fluent in English.
Cohl had two basic assignments at Fort Lee: humorous newsreel inserts and The Newlyweds animated series. The newsreel (one of the first of its kind) was started by the Sales Company in March 1912 and continued by Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
(Éclair's distributor). The Newlyweds started life as a newspaper comic strip by George McManus in the New York World. The three main characters are a fashionable woman drawn in the style of the "Gibson Girl
Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was the personification of a feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen-and-ink-illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States.Some people argue that the...
", her obliging husband, and Baby Snookums, an absolute hellion of a child who nevertheless gets everything he wants (usually at the expense of the father). The series was popular both in the United States and in France (under the name Le Petit Ange). Cohl wanted to make the first animated series, and he liked The Newlyweds. As for McManus, he may have been convinced to sign with Cohl at the urging of his friend Winsor McCay. Prior to this point, there had been a few adaptations of comic series into films, but they were all live action. Examples include Happy Hooligan
Happy Hooligan
Happy Hooligan was a popular and influential early American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper.Happy Hooligan, the first major comic strip by already celebrated cartoonist Opper, debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first...
(starring J. Stuart Blackton as the title character), Buster Brown
Buster Brown
Buster Brown was a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Felton Outcault who was known for his association with the Brown Shoe Company. This mischievous young boy was loosely based on a boy near Outcault's home in Flushing, New York...
, and Mutt and Jeff (later to become a successful animated series).
Cohl began work on The Newlyweds series in November 1912, and the ads started appearing in February 1913. These ads are the oldest on record to use the phrase "animated cartoons"; as would be usual for all of the following comic adaptations, only the comic artist is mentioned in the advertising, never the animator. Cohl achieved his speed (thirteen Newlyweds cartoons in thirteen months) by using the bare minimum of actual animation, the scenes consisting of static tableau with dialog balloons appearing above each character's head (done faithfully in the McManus style). What little motion necessary was done with hinged cut-out figures animated by stop-motion. The only ingenuity in these films lay in the transitions between tableaux, which utilized Cohl's trademark transformations. Nevertheless, Cohl had proved that commercial animation was possible. The series was an instant hit. Only one film in this series has survived, "He Poses for His Portrait" [aka "Le Portrait de Zozor" (Fr.)] (1913).
The success of the series led to an explosion of animation, all adaptations of comic strips, and few of them remembered today. Meanwhile, Cohl saw both "The Story of a Mosquito" and "Gertie the Dinosaur" live at the Hammerstein Theater in New York, and he recorded his admiration of each in his diary. For animation to be practical, it had to move beyond the techniques of Cohl (cut-outs) and McCay (tracing), both of which were arduous, single-person processes. Two men were to independently work out ways around this problem: Raoul Barré
Raoul Barré
Raoul Barré was a Canadian and American cartoonist, animator of the silent film era, and artist.Barré was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only artistic child of an importer of communion wine...
and Randolph Bray. Barré studied art in Paris in the 1890s and was known for his pro-Dreyfus cartoons. In 1920, Cohl told the story of two unnamed visitors that Éclair had forced on him to study his techniques, techniques that they later stole to make their own series. It is possible that these two were Barré and his business partner William C. Nolan
Bill Nolan (animator)
William "Bill" Nolan was an Irish-American animated cartoon writer, animator, director, and artist. He is best-known for creating and perfecting the rubber hose style of animation and for streamlining Felix the Cat. From 1925 to 1927, he worked on a loose animated adaptation of George Herriman's...
. It is possible that Cohl's obvious hostility to his visitors was the result of the knowledge that they were on opposite sides in the Dreyfus Affair. On the other hand, Barré's method for making cartoons quickly, the "slash system", is the exact opposite of Cohl's cut-out system. It is true that Barré's series, The Animated Grouch Chasers, frequently stole characters and scenarios from Cohl, but then again everyone was doing that. Randolph Bray, in collaboration with Earl Hurd, developed the patents that nearly made them the Motion Picture Patents Company
Motion Picture Patents Company
The Motion Picture Patents Company , founded in December 1908, was a trust of all the major American film companies , the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak...
of animated film. Animation historian Michael Barrier speculates that one of Cohl's unnamed visitors may have been Bray instead of Barré.
World War I
On March 11, 1914, the Cohl family left New Jersey for Paris in response to a death in Suzanne's family. They never returned. Eight days later, a fire destroyed most of Éclair's American films, including all but two of Cohl's films ("He Poses for His Portrait" and "Bewitched Matches" [aka "Les Allumettes ensorcelées" (Fr.)]). The latter is the only one of the animated matches films Cohl made to survive. The American studio later moved to Tucson, ArizonaTucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
. The chaos caused by the fire brought Éclair's work in France to a near-standstill. Cohl made a handful of films for Éclair in France, but the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
on August 3, 1914 forced those films to be held back for years before being released.
By August 11, 80% of the French film industry had enlisted or had been drafted. Cohl (at 57 years of age) was too old to fight, but he volunteered as best he could while working at Éclair. His heart was no longer in his work, for his beloved wife Suzanne was slowly dying. In 1916, American cartoons took France by storm. Gaumont imported The Animated Grouch Chasers and for the first time since the early films of Blackton, animated films were being advertised with the name and face of their animator, Raoul Barré. If Barré is the individual who "stole" Cohl's techniques, this must have made him furious (it didn't help that it was his former employer that was doing all the hoopla).
It was at this moment that Cohl was approached by Benjamin Rabier, a popular illustrator of children's books. Rabier wanted Cohl to animate his characters. The producer for the series was René Navarre, a former actor who had become famous playing the anti-hero Fantomas
Fantômas
Fantômas is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre .One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantômas was created in 1911 and appeared in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11...
in a series of films in 1913 and 1914. The distributor was Agence Générale Cinematographique (AGC). The trio parted company over Cohl's resentment that he was not being credited in the advertising. The series, Les Dessins animés de Benjamin Rabier (The Animated Drawings of Benjamin Rabier) starred Flambeau the War Dog. The only surviving film, "Les Fiançailles de Flambeau" ["Flambeau's Wedding"] (released 1917) has cute naturalistic characters from Rabier and coarse morbid humor from Cohl. By the time of Cohl's departure, Rabier had learned enough animation to carry on with the help of two assistants. The series lasted for several years.
Cohl continued work with Éclair throughout this debacle, mostly making newsreel inserts. Based on the few fragments that remain, the series Les Aventures des Pieds Nickelés [Adventures of the Leadfoot Gang] may have been the best work of Cohl's career. It was based on a working class comic strip by Louis Forton, about a gang of anarchistic youngsters constantly getting into trouble with both the criminal underground and the law. The series was terminated by the war, as the Éclair-Journal studios were occupied to make American war propaganda.
Cohl spent the rest of the war serving his country. He joined the United States Air Service Supply as a volunteer on May 11, 1918. His son André had joined the American Transportation Division the previous November.
With the war over, Cohl quit Éclair in May 1920 and made his last significant film, "Fantoche cherche un logement" ["Puppet Looks for an Apartment"]. It was released as "La Maison du fantoche" ["Puppet's Mansion"] in April 1921 by AGC. The only notice paid to it in the trade journals was a one-line plot summary. Nobody cared about Cohl's work anymore, or any other French filmmaker, for that matter. Cohl's career was finished, since there was no longer any way to justify the cost of an animated short subject in a world of live-action features.
Cohl's financial situation deteriorated during the Great Depression and he endured years of severe poverty. While his peer, George Méliès was awarded the Legion of Honor medal in 1931, scant attention was given Cohl's pioneering work in animated film. In the spring of 1937, at the age of 80, he was severely burned in a fire that destroyed his apartment. In response to witnessing his months of suffering at a charity hospital, the young film journalist René Jeanne
René Jeanne
René Jeanne was a French actor, writer, and cinema historian. He was born in 1887 and died in 1969. Jeanne was married to actress Suzanne Bianchetti.Jeanne was also notable for serving on the jury of the Mostra de Venise in 1937 and 1938.- Film Festival :...
helped organize a benefit screening of his work, which played at the Champs-Elysées Cinema on January 19th, 1938, the day before Cohl's death. Coincidentally, Georges Méliès died hours later. Cohl's ashes are kept in the columbarium
Columbarium
A columbarium is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns . The term comes from the Latin columba and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons .The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a particularly fine ancient Roman example, rich in...
of the Père-Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
, in Paris.
Filmography as a director
- N.I.-Ni- C'est fini (1908)
- L' hôtel du silence (1908)
- Le violoniste (1908)
- le veau (1908)
- Le prince Azur (1908)
- Le petit soldat qui devient Dieu (1908)
- Le mouton enragé (1908) (co-director)
- Le miracle des roses (1908)
- Le journal animé (1908)
- Le coffre-fort (1908)
- La vengeance de Riri (1908)
- L' automate (1908)
- La monnaie de mille francs (1908)
- La force de l' enfant (1908)
- La course aux potirons (1908) (co-director)
- Et si nous buvions un coup (1908)
- Blanche comme neige (1908)
- FantasmagorieFantasmagorie (1908 film)Fantasmagorie is an 1908 French animated film by Émile Cohl. It is one of the earliest examples of traditional animation, and considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon.-Description:...
(1908) - Le cauchemar de Fantoche (1908)
- Le cerceau magique (1908)
- Un drame chez les fantoches (1908)
- Les allumettes animées (1908)
- Les frères Boutdebois (1908)
- La séquestrée (1908)
- Un chirurgien distrait (1909)
- Monsieur Clown chez le Lilliputiens (1909)
- Moderne école (1909) (co-director)
- Les Transfigurations (1909)
- Le Spirite (1909)
- Les Locataires D'à-Côté (1909)
- Les Grincheux (1909)
- Les Chaussures Matrimoniales (1909)
- Les Chapeaux Des Belles Dames (1909)
- Le Docteur Carnaval (1909)
- L' Armée d' Agenor (1909)
- La Bataille d'Austerlitz (1909)
- Affaires de Coeur (1909)
- Soyons Donc Sportifs (1909) (co-director)
- La Valise Diplomatique (1909) (co-director)
- La Lampe Qui File (1909)
- L' Agent Du Poche (1909)
- Japon de Fantaisie (1909)
- Clair de lune espagnol (1909) (co-director)
- L' Omelette Fantastique (1909) (co-director)
- Les Beaux-Arts De Jocko (1909)
- La vie à rebours (1909)
- Pauvre Gosse (1909)
- L' éventail animé (1909) (co-director)
- Les Jojeux Microbes (1909)
- Les Couronnes I (1909)
- les Couronnes II (1909)
- Porcelaines Tendres (1909)
- Génération Spontanée (1909)
- Don Quichotte (1909)
- Le Miroir Magique (1909)
- La Ratelier De La Belle-Mère (1909)
- La Lune Dans Son Tablier (1909)
- Les Lunettes Féeriques (1909)
- Toto Devient Anarchiste (1910)
- Rien n'est impossible à l' homme (1910)
- Rêves Enfantins (1910)
- Monsieur Stop (1910)
- Mobilier Fidèle (1910)
- Les chefs-d'oeuvre de Bébé (1910)
- Les Chaînes (1910)
- Le Placier est Tenace (1910)
- Le Petit Chantecler (1910)
- Le Peintre Néo-Impressioniste (1910)
- L' Enfance De l' Art (1910)
- Le Grand Machin et le Petit Chose (1910)
- La Télécouture Sans Fil (1910)
- La Musicomanie (1910)
- Histoire de Chapeaux (1910)
- En Route (1910)
- Dix Siècles D' élégance (1910)
- Bonsoirs Russes (1910)
- Bonsoirs (1910)
- Le Binettoscope (1910)
- Champion De Puzzle (1910)
- Le Songe D' Un Garçon De Café (1910)
- Cadres Fleuris (1910)
- Le Coup De Jarnac (1910)
- Le Tout Petit Faust (1910)
- Les Douze Travaux d'Hercule (1910)
- Singeries Humaines (1910)
- Les Quatres Petits Tailleurs (1910)
- Les Fantaisies D' Agénor Maltracé (1911)
- Les Bestioles Artistes (1911]
- Le Repateur De Cervelles (1911)
- Le Musée Des Grotesques (1911)
- Le Cheveu Délateur (1911)
- La Vengeance Des Espirits (1911)
- La Chambre Ensorcelée (1911)
- La Boîte Diabolique (1911)
- Jobard, Portefaix Par Amour (1911)
- Jobard ne veut pas voir les femmes travailler (1911)
- Jobard ne veut pas rire (1911)
- Jobard, garçon de recettes (1911)
- Jobard, fiancé par interim (1911)
- Jobard est demandé en mariage (1911)
- Jobard chauffeur (1911)
- Jobard change de bonne (1911)
- Jobard à tue sa grand-mère (1911)
- Jobard, amoureux timide (1911)
- C'est roulant (1911)
- Aventures d'un bout de papier (1911)
- Une Poule Mouilléé Qui Se Sèche (1912)
- Ramoneur Malgré Lui (1912)
- Quelle Drôle De Blanchisserie (1912)
- Poulot N'est Pas Sage (1912)
- Moulay Hafid et Alphonse XIII (1912)
- Les Métamorphoses Comiques (1912)
- Les Jouets Animes (1912)
- Les Extraordinaires Exercices De La Famille Coeur-de-Buis (1912)
- Les Exploits De Feu-Follet (1912)
- Le Prince de Galles et Fallières (1912)
- Le premier jour de vacances de Poilot (1912)
- Le marié à mal aux dents (1912)
- La Marseillaise (1912)
- La Baignoire (1912)
- Jeunes Gens à marier (1912)
- Fruits Et Légumes Vivants (1912)
- Dans La Valléé D'Ossau (1912)
- Monsieur de Crac (1912)
- Campbell Soups (1912)
- War in Turkey (1913)
- Rockefeller (1913)
- Il Joue Avec Dodo (1913)
- I Confidence (1913)
- Castro in New York (1913)
- Carte Américaine (1913)
- The Subway (1913)
- Milk (1913)
- Graft (1913)
- Coal (1913)
- When He Wants a Dog, He Wants A Dog (1913)
- Business Must Not Interfere (1913)
- Wilson and the Hats (1913)
- Wilson and the Broom (1913)
- Universal Trade Marks (1913)
- The Two Presidents (1913)
- The Police Women (1913)
- The Auto (1913)
- Poker (1913)
- Gaynor and the Night Clubs (1913)
- He Wants What He Wants When He Want It (1913)
- Poor Little Clap He Was Only Dreaming (1913)
- Wilson and the Tariffs (1913)
- The Masquerade (1913)
- The Brand Of California (1913)
- Bewitched Matches (1913)
- He Loves To Watch The Flight of Time (1913)
- The Two Suffragettes (1913)
- The Safety Pin (1913)
- The Red Balloons (1913)
- The Mosquito (1913)
- He Ruins His Family's Reputation (1913)
- He Slept Well (1913)
- He Was Not Ill, Only Unhappy (1913)
- Uncle Sam and his Suit (1913)
- The Polo Boat (1913)
- The Cubists (1913)
- The Artist (1913)
- It Is Hard to Please Him But It Is Worth It (1913)
- He Poses For His Portrait (1913)
- Wilson's Row Boat (1913)
- Clara and her Mysterious Toys (1913)
- The Hat (1913)
- Thaw and the Lasso (1913)
- Bryant and the Speeches (1913)
- A Vegetarian's Dream (1913)
- Thaw and the Spider (1913)
- He Loves to be Amused (1913)
- Unforeseen Metamorphosis (1913)
- He Likes Things Upside Down (1913)
- Pickup Is A Sportsman (1913)
- Zozor (1914)
- What They Eat (1914)
- The Terrible Scrap Of Paper (1914)
- The Greedy Neighbor (1914)
- The Bath (1914)
- The Anti-Neurasthenic Trumpet (1914)
- Ses Ancêtres (1914)
- Serbia's Card (1914)
- Le ouistiti de Toto (1914)
- L' enlèvement de Denajire Goldebois (1914)
- L' avenir dévoilé par les lignes de pieds (1914)
- He Does Not Care To Be Photographed (1914)
- Il aime le bruit (1914)
- Society at Simpson Center (1914)
- Les allumettes fantaisistes (1914)
- The Social Group (1914)
- Une drame sur la planche à chaussures (1915)
- Fantaisies truquées (1915)
- Éclair Journal (1915)
- Pulcherie et ses meubles (1916)
- Pages d' histoire number 1 and 2 (1916)
- Mariage par suggestion (1916)
- Les victuailles de Gretchen se révoltent (1916)
- Les tableaux futuristes et incohérents (1916)
- Les fiançailles de Flambeau (1916)
- Les exploits de Farfadet (1916)
- Les évasions de Bob Walter (1916)
- Les braves petits soldats de plomb (1916)
- Les aventures de Clémentine (1916) (co-regisseur)
- La main mystérieuse (1916)
- La journée de Flambeau (1916) (co-regisseur)
- La campagne de France 1814 (1916)
- La blanchisserie américaine (1916)
- Jeux de cartes (1916)
- Flambeau au pays des surprises (1916)
- Figures de cire et têtes de bois (1916)
- Éclair Journal: Série (1916)
- Croquemitaine et Rosalie (1916)
- Comment nous entendons (1916)
- Les aventures des Pieds-Nickelés (1918)
- La maison du Fantoche (1921)