Quirino Cristiani
Encyclopedia
Quirino Cristiani was an Argentine
animation
director
and cartoonist
, responsible for the world's first two animated feature films as well as the first animated feature film with sound, even though the only copies of these two films were lost in a fire. He is also the first person to create animation solely using cardboard cutouts.
, Italy
. His family moved to Buenos Aires
, Argentina, in 1900, and Quirino spent his childhood soaking up the fast pace and left-leaning politics of the great southern metropolis. He came to consider himself a porteño first (as the natives of the port of Buenos Aires called themselves) and an Argentine second.
As a teenager, he developed a passion for drawing, which led him through a brief course with the Academy of Fine Arts to the publication of political caricature
s for the city newspapers. Soon the perfect target for his satire presented himself.
The national elections of 1916 peacefully ended the thirty-six-year-long rule of the Conservative party and placed Radical party leader Hipólito Yrigoyen
in the President
's seat. Yrigoyen favored the lower middle class, especially in Buenos Aires, and granted unprecedented freedom to the press. The press in response turned on him, mocking his social awkwardness, his replacement of Conservative corruption with Radical corruption in the government, and his decision to keep Argentina out of World War I
, a decision that was unpopular with the germanophile Argentine military. He was soon dubbed "Peludo" ("shaggy") for his lack of personal grooming
(with the additional slang meaning of "idiot").
Living in the capital was another Italian immigrant, Frederico Valle, once a cameraman and director in Europe (he used Wilbur Wright's visit to Rome
in 1909 as the opportunity to film the world's first aerial cinematography
), now a producer of newsreel
s for his adopted country. Valle was apolitical, but he knew the porteños were not. He hired the twenty-year old Cristiani off the street, gave him Émile Cohl
's Les Allumettes animées (Animated Matches, 1908) to teach him the technique, and set him loose. Before 1916 was out, Valle's newsreel Actualides Valle came out with an episode including the one minute cartoon La Intervención en la provincia de Buenos Aires (Intervention in the Province of Buenos Aires) by Quirino Cristiani. The cartoon was about Yrigoyen's ouster of Buenos Aires governor Marcelino Ugarte for dishonesty. This film used cardboard cutouts as the form of animation, a choice Cristiani would stick with throughout his career.
This short film did surprisingly well, and Valle announced a new project: the green animator would next create the world's first feature-length animated film, with President Yrigoyen as the subject. The funding would come from a Mr. Franchini, who owned a chain of movie theaters to show the finished film. Cristiani would get his character designs from newspaper cartoonist Diógenes Taborda (pen name "El Mono", "The Monkey") Amazingly, Cristiani actually managed to accomplish his goal (doing the lion's share of the animation while Taborda found better uses for his valuable time): the 58,000-frame El Apóstol
(an hour and ten minutes at an anemic 14 frames per second) premiered on November 9, 1917.
The movie was a satire, with President Yrigoyen ascending to the heavens to use Jupiter's thunderbolts to cleanse Buenos Aires of immorality and corruption. The result is a burnt city. The film was well-received, but most of the praise went to producer Valle, with what was left over going to Taborda.
In 1918, the German
commander in Argentina, Baron von Luxburg, decided to manipulate Argentina into joining World War I on its side by sinking an Argentine ship and blaming the act on the Entente
. The tales of the survivors of the incident led nearly everyone to realize what really happened, but Yrigoyen swung his political weight to cover the incident up, out of fear that Argentina might be pushed into the war as an enemy of Germany, an outcome he feared just as much as a German alliance.
Cristiani saw the incident as the perfect opportunity, and with a new set of producers created the world's second feature-length animated film, Sin dejar rastros in 1918. The title (Leaving No Trace) was a reference to von Luxburg's supposed order to the German U-boat captain who sank the ship. President Yrigoyen felt he had no choice but to order the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to confiscate the film the day after it premiered. In doing this, the Radical showed himself little better than the repressive Conservative presidents he had replaced. On the other hand, Cristiani was not imprisoned and spent the next several years creating political cartoons and caricatures for the newspapers. Two other animated features were put out at this time by Andrés Ducaud, the man who designed the fire effects in El Apóstol.
To support his growing family, Cristiani founded the advertising company Publi-Cinema, where he made short commercial cartoons. To show these cartoons, he traveled to the poorer parts of town, where no movie theatres were to be found, and showed the paying public Chaplin
shorts and other films interspersed with his animation. This did so well that the police shut him down for "disturbing the peace and interrupting traffic".
President "Peludo" finished out his six-year term in 1922, and was succeeded by another Radical, Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
. During Alvear's presidency, Cristiani started making animated shorts for entertainment purposes. Some of the titles included Firpo-Dempsey (1923) on the boxing match
between American
heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey
and Argentinian champion Luis Firpo
, Uruguayos Forever (1924) on Uruguay's Olympic gold medal in soccer
, and Humberto de garufa (Little Umberto's Folic, 1924), on the visit of Italian Prince Umberto of Savoy
to Buenos Aires. In 1926, a fire destroyed Federico Valle's film vaults; among the films lost forever was El Apóstol.
In 1928, the aging Hipólito Yrigoyen was re-elected president of Argentina. Cristiani felt that the man was too dominated by the corrupt leaders of the Radical party. With a script by Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, he set out to make his third animated feature film, Peludópolis. The movie was be a sort of fable, with pirate Yrigoyen's floating "Peludo City" (Argentina) beset by hungry sharks (the Radicals). Cristiani converted the operation over to sound partway through, including a few songs in the soundtrack (he used the primitive sound-on-disc
system for the recording since it was unlikely that most Argentine theaters would be able to handle sound-on-film
at the time of release). Then, on September 6, 1930, a year into production, work on Peludópolis was halted when President Yrigoyen was ousted by a Conservative military coup d'état
. With so much invested in the film so far, Cristiani decided to proceed, re-arranging the plot to de-emphasize Yrigoyen and the sharks, and carefully adding the characters of the generals as the heroes, in an attempt to protect himself from possible persecution. He then added an everyman character named Juan Pueblo, to become the moral centre of the film. With the provisional blessing of the provisional ruler of Argentina, General José Félix Uriburu
, Cristiani premiered the film on September 16, 1931. It was the first animated film with sound.
Few people felt that the wake of a revolution was the right time to laugh about it. In addition, the Great Depression
had come to Argentina. Worst of all, Yrigoyen died in bed in 1933 and suddenly the entire country was gripped with grief for a man few had cared deeply for when he was alive. Cristiani respectfully withdrew the film from circulation.
Quirino Cristiani never had another chance for greatness in animation. Mickey Mouse
took over Argentina like he had the rest of the world, and like so many other artists, Cristiani couldn't compete. Studios Cristiani was converted into a dubbing/subbing lab, one of the best of its kind in Argentina.
Cristiani made three more animated films in his life, none of which was very memorable. When Walt Disney
came to Argentina as part of his Latin America
research tour, Cristiani showed his films to him, then sent him to cartoonist Molina Campos, the source of the gaucho
segment in Saludos Amigos
(1943). Two fires in 1957 and 1961 destroyed the majority of Cristiani's work, including the only prints of Peludópolis. He died in Bernal, Argentina, on August 2, 1984.
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and 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...
, responsible for the world's first two animated feature films as well as the first animated feature film with sound, even though the only copies of these two films were lost in a fire. He is also the first person to create animation solely using cardboard cutouts.
Biography
Cristiani was born on July 2, 1896, in Santa GiulettaSanta Giuletta
Santa Giuletta is a comune in the Province of Pavia in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 50 km south of Milan and about 15 km south of Pavia...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. His family moved to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina, in 1900, and Quirino spent his childhood soaking up the fast pace and left-leaning politics of the great southern metropolis. He came to consider himself a porteño first (as the natives of the port of Buenos Aires called themselves) and an Argentine second.
As a teenager, he developed a passion for drawing, which led him through a brief course with the Academy of Fine Arts to the publication of political caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s for the city newspapers. Soon the perfect target for his satire presented himself.
The national elections of 1916 peacefully ended the thirty-six-year-long rule of the Conservative party and placed Radical party leader Hipólito Yrigoyen
Hipólito Yrigoyen
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem was twice President of Argentina . His activism became the prime impetus behind the obtainment of universal suffrage in Argentina in 1912...
in the President
President of Argentina
The President of the Argentine Nation , usually known as the President of Argentina, is the head of state of Argentina. Under the national Constitution, the President is also the chief executive of the federal government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.Through Argentine history, the...
's seat. Yrigoyen favored the lower middle class, especially in Buenos Aires, and granted unprecedented freedom to the press. The press in response turned on him, mocking his social awkwardness, his replacement of Conservative corruption with Radical corruption in the government, and his decision to keep Argentina out 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...
, a decision that was unpopular with the germanophile Argentine military. He was soon dubbed "Peludo" ("shaggy") for his lack of personal grooming
Personal grooming
Personal grooming is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. It is a species-typical behavior that is controlled by neural circuits in the brain.- In humans :...
(with the additional slang meaning of "idiot").
Living in the capital was another Italian immigrant, Frederico Valle, once a cameraman and director in Europe (he used Wilbur Wright's visit to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1909 as the opportunity to film the world's first aerial cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
), now a producer of newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
s for his adopted country. Valle was apolitical, but he knew the porteños were not. He hired the twenty-year old Cristiani off the street, gave him Émile Cohl
Émile Cohl
Émile Cohl , born Émile Eugène Jean Louis Courtet, was a French caricaturist of the largely forgotten Incoherent Movement, cartoonist, and animator, called "The Father of the Animated Cartoon" and "The Oldest Parisian".-Biography:Émile's father Elie was a rubber salesman, and his mother, Emilie...
's Les Allumettes animées (Animated Matches, 1908) to teach him the technique, and set him loose. Before 1916 was out, Valle's newsreel Actualides Valle came out with an episode including the one minute cartoon La Intervención en la provincia de Buenos Aires (Intervention in the Province of Buenos Aires) by Quirino Cristiani. The cartoon was about Yrigoyen's ouster of Buenos Aires governor Marcelino Ugarte for dishonesty. This film used cardboard cutouts as the form of animation, a choice Cristiani would stick with throughout his career.
This short film did surprisingly well, and Valle announced a new project: the green animator would next create the world's first feature-length animated film, with President Yrigoyen as the subject. The funding would come from a Mr. Franchini, who owned a chain of movie theaters to show the finished film. Cristiani would get his character designs from newspaper cartoonist Diógenes Taborda (pen name "El Mono", "The Monkey") Amazingly, Cristiani actually managed to accomplish his goal (doing the lion's share of the animation while Taborda found better uses for his valuable time): the 58,000-frame El Apóstol
El Apóstol
El Apóstol was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film...
(an hour and ten minutes at an anemic 14 frames per second) premiered on November 9, 1917.
The movie was a satire, with President Yrigoyen ascending to the heavens to use Jupiter's thunderbolts to cleanse Buenos Aires of immorality and corruption. The result is a burnt city. The film was well-received, but most of the praise went to producer Valle, with what was left over going to Taborda.
In 1918, the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
commander in Argentina, Baron von Luxburg, decided to manipulate Argentina into joining World War I on its side by sinking an Argentine ship and blaming the act on the Entente
Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was the name given to the alliance among Britain, France and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907....
. The tales of the survivors of the incident led nearly everyone to realize what really happened, but Yrigoyen swung his political weight to cover the incident up, out of fear that Argentina might be pushed into the war as an enemy of Germany, an outcome he feared just as much as a German alliance.
Cristiani saw the incident as the perfect opportunity, and with a new set of producers created the world's second feature-length animated film, Sin dejar rastros in 1918. The title (Leaving No Trace) was a reference to von Luxburg's supposed order to the German U-boat captain who sank the ship. President Yrigoyen felt he had no choice but to order the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to confiscate the film the day after it premiered. In doing this, the Radical showed himself little better than the repressive Conservative presidents he had replaced. On the other hand, Cristiani was not imprisoned and spent the next several years creating political cartoons and caricatures for the newspapers. Two other animated features were put out at this time by Andrés Ducaud, the man who designed the fire effects in El Apóstol.
To support his growing family, Cristiani founded the advertising company Publi-Cinema, where he made short commercial cartoons. To show these cartoons, he traveled to the poorer parts of town, where no movie theatres were to be found, and showed the paying public Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
shorts and other films interspersed with his animation. This did so well that the police shut him down for "disturbing the peace and interrupting traffic".
President "Peludo" finished out his six-year term in 1922, and was succeeded by another Radical, Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Máximo Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear Pacheco , better known as Marcelo T. de Alvear was an Argentine politician and President of Argentina from October 12, 1922 to October 12, 1928.-Biography:...
. During Alvear's presidency, Cristiani started making animated shorts for entertainment purposes. Some of the titles included Firpo-Dempsey (1923) on the boxing match
Jack Dempsey versus Luis Firpo
The Jack Dempsey versus Luis Ángel Firpo fight was a historical boxing fight: It was the first time that a Latin American fighter would challenge for the world Heavyweight title, and it would be one of the defining fights of Dempsey's career.-The fight:...
between American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
and Argentinian champion Luis Firpo
Luis Firpo
Luis Ángel Firpo, , was an Argentine boxer. Born in Junín, Argentina, he was nicknamed "The Wild Bull of The Pampas."...
, Uruguayos Forever (1924) on Uruguay's Olympic gold medal in soccer
Football at the 1924 Summer Olympics
At the 1924 Summer Olympics held in Paris, Uruguay dominated the Football tournament winning the Gold.-Amateur Status:In 1921, the Belgium Football Association first allowed for payments to players for time lost from work; in the months that followed four other Associations permitted similar...
, and Humberto de garufa (Little Umberto's Folic, 1924), on the visit of Italian Prince Umberto of Savoy
Umberto II of Italy
Umberto II, occasionally anglicized as Humbert II was the last King of Italy for slightly over a month, from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946. He was nicknamed the King of May -Biography:...
to Buenos Aires. In 1926, a fire destroyed Federico Valle's film vaults; among the films lost forever was El Apóstol.
In 1928, the aging Hipólito Yrigoyen was re-elected president of Argentina. Cristiani felt that the man was too dominated by the corrupt leaders of the Radical party. With a script by Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, he set out to make his third animated feature film, Peludópolis. The movie was be a sort of fable, with pirate Yrigoyen's floating "Peludo City" (Argentina) beset by hungry sharks (the Radicals). Cristiani converted the operation over to sound partway through, including a few songs in the soundtrack (he used the primitive sound-on-disc
Sound-on-disc
The term Sound-on-disc refers to a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or playback sound in sync with a motion picture...
system for the recording since it was unlikely that most Argentine theaters would be able to handle sound-on-film
Sound-on-film
Sound-on-film refers to a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog sound track or digital sound track,...
at the time of release). Then, on September 6, 1930, a year into production, work on Peludópolis was halted when President Yrigoyen was ousted by a Conservative military coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
. With so much invested in the film so far, Cristiani decided to proceed, re-arranging the plot to de-emphasize Yrigoyen and the sharks, and carefully adding the characters of the generals as the heroes, in an attempt to protect himself from possible persecution. He then added an everyman character named Juan Pueblo, to become the moral centre of the film. With the provisional blessing of the provisional ruler of Argentina, General José Félix Uriburu
José Félix Uriburu
General José Félix Benito Uriburu y Uriburu was the first de facto President of Argentina, achieved through a military coup, from September 6, 1930 to February 20, 1932.-Biography:...
, Cristiani premiered the film on September 16, 1931. It was the first animated film with sound.
Few people felt that the wake of a revolution was the right time to laugh about it. In addition, the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
had come to Argentina. Worst of all, Yrigoyen died in bed in 1933 and suddenly the entire country was gripped with grief for a man few had cared deeply for when he was alive. Cristiani respectfully withdrew the film from circulation.
Quirino Cristiani never had another chance for greatness in animation. Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
took over Argentina like he had the rest of the world, and like so many other artists, Cristiani couldn't compete. Studios Cristiani was converted into a dubbing/subbing lab, one of the best of its kind in Argentina.
Cristiani made three more animated films in his life, none of which was very memorable. When Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
came to Argentina as part of his Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
research tour, Cristiani showed his films to him, then sent him to cartoonist Molina Campos, the source of the gaucho
Gaucho
Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...
segment in Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos is a 1942 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is the 6th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It is the first of six package films made by the Disney studio in the 1940s...
(1943). Two fires in 1957 and 1961 destroyed the majority of Cristiani's work, including the only prints of Peludópolis. He died in Bernal, Argentina, on August 2, 1984.
Filmography
- 1917: El ApóstolEl ApóstolEl Apóstol was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film...
- 1918: Sin dejar rastrosSin dejar rastrosSin dejar rastros is a 1918 Argentine animated feature film. It was written and directed by Quirino Cristiani. The plot revolved around the recent incident involving the German commander Baron von Luxburg who sank an Argentine ship intending to frame the Entente for the act...
- 1923: Firpo-Dempsey
- 1924: Umbertito de garufa, Urugayos forever
- 1925: Rinoplastia, Gastrotomia
- 1931: Peludópolis
- 1938: El mono relojeroEl Mono relojeroEl Mono relojero is a 1938 Argentine animated short film directed by Quirino Cristiani. It is the only film from this director that exists up to this day, since all his other productions were lost in a series of fires at the...
- 1940-1951: Da Nasrda mono eco Mornici (released 1970)
External links
- Quirino Cristiani, The Untold Story of Argentina's Pioneer Animator, by Giannalberto Bendazzi: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.4/articles/bendazzi1.4.html
- Quirino Cristiani Movie, by Gabriele Zucchelli: http://www.QuirinoCristianiMovie.com/