Gaumont and Pathé are proud to have employed the eminent caricaturist Émile Cohl over a hundred years ago. The two companies joined forces for the digital restoration of his surviving works and are pleased to present them here in Bologna for the first time in two programs of ten animation films made at Gaumont between 1908 and 1910 and four Pathé productions from 1911.

At Les Buttes Chaumont, Cohl worked behind his vertically mounted camera like a prisoner laborer, producing in 1908 alone no less than twenty-two films, inventing a thousand different ways of using that ‘American movement’, filming frame by frame, or stop motion, that was of great interest to burlesque comedy directors of the time; while, in turn, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by American director Stuart Blackton would influence Cohl’s Fantoches shot in the summer of 1908: La Cauchemar de Fantoche and Un drame chez les fantoches.

Cohl used every animation technique: line drawing, puppets or object animation, decoupage, etc.

Later, with Les Générations comiques, he returned to animating characters in flesh and blood. His Chaussures matrimoniales and the delicate, complex Affaire de cœur (1910) are a tribute to the trend of making real objects come to life in film. In the space of a few minutes En Route covers the history of transportation with paper cut-outs, a pedagogical exercise in which Cohl demonstrates his verve and inventiveness. 1910 is also the year of his splendid Le Peintre néo-impressioniste, in which Cohl recycled the format of Alphonse Allais’s old ‘incoherent’ joke: monochrome paintings that anticipate modern art.

Cohl’s skill and speed did not wear away, which can be seen in Retapeur de cervelles, his first masterpiece for Pathé, in Le Musée des grotesques, Le Cheveu delateur and La Revanche des ésprits, all shot in 1911 for Pathé Frères.