Grimault, Paul
GRIMAULT, Paul
Animator. Nationality: French. Born: Neuilly-Sur-Seine, 23 March 1905. Education: Attended the Ecole des Arts Appliqués, Paris. Career: Scene painter for stage sets, and occasional actor on stage and in films; 1936–51—founding director, with André Surrat, Les Gémeaux production company; 1951—formed Les Films Paul Grimault for producing animated shorts, advertising films, and optical effects for films and television works. Award: Venice Festival Prize for Le Petit Soldat, 1948. Died: 29 March 1994.
Films as Animator:
- 1937
Phénomènes électriques
- 1938
Le Messager de la lumière
- 1939
Gô chez les oiseaux (revised version, Les Passagers de la Grande Ourse, 1941)
- 1942
Le Marchand de notes
- 1943
L'Epouvantail
- 1944
Le Voleur de paratonnerres
- 1946
La Flute magique
- 1947
Le Petit Soldat
- 1952
Pierres oubliées
- 1955
Enrico cuisinier (co—live-action)
- 1958
La Faim du monde (re-edited version for children, Le Monde en raccourci, 1975)
- 1969
Le Diamant
- 1973
Le Chien Mélomane
- 1980
Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and the Bird) (incorporates footage from repudiated film La Bergère et le ramoneur, 1952)
Films as Actor:
- 1934
L'Atalante (Vigo); L'Hôtel du libre échange (M. Allégret)
- 1936
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange ) (Renoir)
- 1953
Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday) (Tati)
- 1958
Paris mange son pain (P. Prévert); Mon oncle (Tati)
Other Films:
- 1961
Cuba Si! (Marker) (special effects); Le Vrai Visage de Thérèse de Lisieux (Agostini—short) (special effects)
- 1962
Mourir à Madrid (Rossif) (special effects); Marcel, ta mère t'appelle (Colombat) (pr)
- 1963
La Foire aux cancres (Daquin) (special effects); Le Côte d'Adam (Sengissen—short) (special effects); Jacques Copeau (Leenhardt—short) (special effects)
- 1964
Les Temps morts (Laloux) (pr)
- 1965
La Demoiselle et le violoncelliste (Laguionie) (pr)
- 1967
L'Arche de Noé (Laguionie) (pr)
- 1968
La Tartelette (Colombat) (pr)
- 1969
Une Bombe par hasard (Laguionie) (pr); Calveras (Colombat) (pr)
- 1973
La Tête (Bourget) (pr)
- 1974
Un, deux, trois . . . (Shaker) (pr)
- 1989
La Table tournante (d + co-sc + ro)
Publications
By GRIMAULT: articles—
Image et Son (Paris), December 1965.
Cinéma Français (Paris), no. 32, 1979.
Banc-Titre (Paris), March 1980.
Jeune Cinéma (Paris), July-August 1980.
Time Out (London), 19–25 July 1984.
Films (London), August 1984.
CinémAction (Courbevoie), April 1989.
On GRIMAULT: book—
Pagliano, Jean-Pierre, Paul Grimault, Paris, 1986.
On GRIMAULT: articles—
Chilo, M., in Cinéma (Paris), January 1957.
"Grimault Issue" of Image et Son (Paris), April 1967.
Image et Son (Paris), March 1980.
Continental Film Review (London), April 1980.
Visions (Brussels), 15 January 1983.
CinémAction (Conde-sur-Noireau), no. 51, April 1989.
Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1990.
Obituary, Plateau, vol. 15, no. 1, 1994.
Bref, no. 20, Spring 1994.
Télérama (Paris), 6 April 1994.
Film-dienst (Cologne), 26 April 1994.
Obituary, Mensuel du Cinéma, May 1994.
* * *
Paul Grimault's years of activity cover almost the whole period of French animation. He was fortunate to be associated, in his early days, with such outstanding artists as Marcel Carné, the abstractionist painter Max Ernst, and the famous French comedian Jacques Tati.
Grimault trained as a graphic designer, and in his early professional period he joined an advertising agency and was responsible for many short publicity films. He soon became a strong link between the glorious traditional French animation represented by Emil Cohl and previously by the magical cinematographic touch of Georges Meliès. He was certainly the most outstanding representative of the early period of French animation and was responsible for a new approach with a new look. This new look had a much richer visual content and was nearer to the quality of graphical fine art rather than a caricatured comic strip concept. This school of French animation was established immediately after the Second World War with such films as Le Voleur de paratonnerres, La Flute magique, and an extremely charming short film in 1947, Le Petit Soldat, based on the Hans Andersen fairy tale. After doing a number of commercial films, in 1973 he made Le Chien Mélomane, a short philosophical film about (as is so usual with many contemporary animators) the atomic bomb. By this time his style was established, and maintained by a new generation of young French artists, including Jean François Laguionie, Jacques Colombat, and Emil Bourget. In their visual style they follow closely Grimault's rich visualization of backgrounds and his conception of classical visual style.
Grimault's most notable achievement was the feature film The King and the Bird, which he finished in 1980. It was an instant success and he received a major national award for it, the Dulac Prize. His close collaboration with the outstanding French writer Jacques Prévert gave The King and the Bird a depth of content not usually seen in animated cartoons.
—John Halas