Cretinetti che bello! / Too Beautiful

Cretinetti che bello! / Too Beautiful (IT 1909) starring André Deed as Cretinetti. Please do click on the images to enlarge them.

(Troppo bello! / Cretinetti e le donne) (IT 1909) dir: ?. cast: André Deed (Cretinetti). prod: Itala Film. censor date: ??. copy: 35 mm, 84 m (orig. l: 97 m), 4'05'' (18 fps); titles: ITA. source: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino.

    Grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Slapstick Prog. 2 Clowns and Cretins, 9 Oct 2023

Ulrich Rüdel (GCM 2023): “ The engrossing rhythm, simple narrative, perfect visual tricks, and non-stop humor-filled adventure make Cretinetti che bello! one of the best examples of André Deed’s productions,” the Museo Nazionale del Cinema enthused upon preserving their print of this Italian André Deed film. It is hard not to concur. Successful in terms of its comedy construction, but also felicitous in terms of the fate in this instance of Deed’s Cretinetti character, perhaps indeed the most cretin-esque of all silent comics. After some early work with Méliès, he commenced his series of “Boireau” comedies at Pathé in 1906; the 1908 start of a series for Itala Film in Turin necessitated the change to his “Cretinetti” moniker as seen here due to the studio’s owning the comic character. Distributed in France in turn, “Cretinetti” became “Gribouille,” and eventually, when Deed returned to Pathé in 1911 so did his first character name. "

" This jungle of comic characters and comic nicknames (there was even a French “Patachon” pre-dating the Danish one, and with a legal chain of ownership, it seems), reflects or anticipates, albeit likely coincidentally, many themes, traditions, and production histories of early comedy: An Itala production starring a French comic, it exemplifies the comically fruitful exchange between those two national cinemas in the years around 1910. Outside Italy, Deed was marketed as “Foolshead,” “Boireau,” and so forth, ultimately inspiring American slapstick through the emergence of Keystone comedies: Cretinetti che bello! was released in both the UK and the USA in the autumn of 1909 as Too Beautiful. As if to pay tribute to comic cinema’s music-hall roots, Deed sports long Little Tich-like shoes; his humongous top hat characterizes him as the very dandy type that Max Linder at the same time would develop into a far more personable (and less grotesquely named) star image. "

" Here, however, apparently dandy Deed is just “too handsome” (thus the title) to any woman whose path he crosses. His predatory suitors, in a plot distinctly foreshadowing Keaton’s underrated Seven Chances and its concluding chase, consist partly of men in drag, whose collective amour fou results in a thorough and literal dismemberment of the comic. Luckily, this is followed by the type of miraculous re-assembly only a student of Méliès would think of, reminding us who started it all – and all this in a mere five minutes of comic mayhem. " Ulrich Rüdel

AA: Revisited a Cretinetti comedy that I have seen before for instance in GCM Sacile 2002 in the Avanguardia italiana 3 programme.

It is a perfect and crazy chase film as Ulrich Rüdel states above. The Little Tich shoes also anticipate Leningrad Cowboys. The combination of the over-the-top hat and ultra-long shoes shares something with the psychology of Chaplin's The Tramp gear: the "ill fitting" concept interpreted in quite a different fashion.

Georges Méliès and R. W. Paul were among the inventors of the apocalyptic film comedy where the world perishes utterly. André Deed was a master successor to the trend that seems to have disappeared after Jerry Lewis and Blake Edwards (The Great Race ending with the collapse of the Eiffel Tower).

The concept of a massive chase by women of the desperate male was refined and elevated by Buster Keaton in Seven Chances, as Ulrich states above. Before Cretinetti, the concept had been also been cultivated at Biograph in a movie called Personal (US 1904, D: Wallace McCutcheon), remade at Edison as How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Column (US 1904, D: Edwin S. Porter) and at Lubin as Meet Me at the Fountain (US 1904). (GCM 2008: Brighton 30 Years After).

As Ulrich Rüdel observes, Cretinetti started his film career with Méliès in 1901 and was obviously inspired by him in the disjecta membra finale. It is an original and shocking touch to have the "too beautiful" man literally quartered by lovestruck women. Retrospectively, the conclusion seems like an allegory of star worship.