Émile Cohl - Text
Émile Courtet, who went by the name Émile Cohl, was born on 4 January 1857 and died on 20 January 1938. Before coming to cinema, he tried his hand at several artistic endeavours, including illustration, painting, journalism and magic, but it was through his work as a caricaturist in particular (he was the student of André Gill) that he became known.
Cohl began his career in animation late in life, in 1908, when he made what is seen by many as the first animated film in the history of cinema, Fantasmagorie. As a contemporary of James Stuart Blackton, it is difficult to establish which of the two was the first to use the “hand crank” system, which made shooting image by image possible. Whatever the case, Cohl invented and put in place several techniques, including the animation stand, whose use in animation he pioneered. Because he worked alone, his method was artisanal, quickly obliging him, in order to meet the deadlines and level of productivity demanded of him by Léon Gaumont, to abandon the animated drawing technique, which was very time consuming, and turn to others instead (the animation of cut-up paper, marionettes, puppets, objects, etc.).
Cohl worked for Gaumont until September 1910 and then for Charles Pathé until 1912, at which time he left for Fort Lee, New Jersey to produce his films for the Éclair company. There, he was the first to create a series of animated drawings based on a famous comic strip, in this case The Newlyweds by George McManus. It was during this same period that Cohl denounced the practices of certain manufacturers who had visited him in his studio in order to get their hands on the principle behind his inventions, enabling them to establish the cartoon industry as it took shape in the 1910s. Most of Cohl’s films from his American period were lost in a fire at the Fort Lee studios. Cohl returned to France in 1914 and continued to work for Éclair until 1920-21 (most notably adapting the series Les Pieds Nickelés by Louis Forton).
Bibliography
- Vignaux, Valérie (ed.). 1895, no. 53 (December 2007), “Émile Cohl.” https://doi.org/10.4000/ 1895.2163.
- Vimenet, Pascal (ed.) Émile Cohl. Paris: Les Animés, 2008.
- Courtet-Cohl, Pierre and Bernard Génin. Émile Cohl : l’inventeur du dessin animé. Paris: Omniscience, 2008.
