The December Babies Part I
# 6**
Misterix December 1945
Created by Max Massimino Garnier and Paul Campani (1946).
In part inspired by superheroes U.S., then still little known in our country, Misterix wearing a robust red suit and draws his power from a tiny nuclear device inserted in the belt which, when properly adjusted, it can stun an opponent or destroy a house . In every day life he is called John Smith and he is a
reporter for the Globe. But post-war Italy is certainly very different from the United States, and often his gimmick fails or is not charged. HE creates an atomic device capable of emitting energy beams, and attaches to a belt of a red suit (initially blue), which closely resembles the armor of certain heroes of modern technology. In some episodes is even able to fly, which is then forgotten, or perhaps discarded. In the last episodes of the series, however, the atomic device was no longer used (perhaps it was definitely spoiled), and remained only the suit to make it resemble a "super". The adventures of this character are then progressed, with better luck in Argentina.
George "Max" Massimino Garnier (1924-1985) was producer, screenwriter and filmmaker. His vivid profile is plotted in the following letter, written by the historian and film critic Giannalberto Bendazzi. As pointed out by Bendazzi, Garnier played a key role in the old festival of Lucca, and he was named the organization that for years, between various events, organized the comic events that has continued through the experience. With this retrospective, Lucca Animation wants to pay tribute to one of the men at which the animation is more Italian. Do not you taking the opportunity to write your own fiftieth anniversary, you would not have wanted you first, you were graduated in mathematical physics (and universite one of the most stringent in the world, the Normale di Pisa) but not you lost opportunity to say that math and everything but the patterns and stiffness. You were born in Turin On October 7, 1924 como George Massimino-Garnier (note the accent: Garnierrnrr needed to be said, but all equivocavano the pronunciation and speaking Garnier said, without you I lose time to correct them, as to the rules of baptism, George was immediately relegated on official documents and it was you became universally Max). Desti the best of you in Modena, the Film Paul. You died in Rome on 21 December 1985.
Giannalberto Bendazzi:
"Why do you write?
Because you have been one of the greatest figures of Italian fumetti and also internationally in the last fifty years. And as the century and the millennium are about to end I would like the young people of your and my world (the animation, in fact) they know it and you will not forget. Like the way it's going, why ... But first things first.
In 1954 he laid the foundation in Modena, together with Paolo (Paul) Campani, the Film Paul. He drew, you were writing texts and textures. There ingrandiste and you did luck when state television, RAI, invented the advertising formula known as "Carousel", a minute and a half of pure entertainment plus 30 seconds
of "tail" advertising. It was then, from 1957 onwards, which really was born of Italian small-scale industry: because the cartoon became the king of "Carousel," and you of Paul, and then Bozzetto, Gamma Film, the Pagot, De Mas, Picard, Biassoni, Cavandoli and many other coglieste the occasion of that minute and a half to do a lot of small series with many small characters often very pleasant. You and Paul you made Toto and Tata, Angelino, Pupa and Bob, the Merendero and do not know how many more others. For fifteen years you were among the most fertile and rich Italian producers of animation.
Then Paul broke up and you went to Rome to coordinate, for the Crown Film Festival, the project of the Fables of Europe: over 40 short films, each a traditional tale for children of a country in Europe, made by a film-makers of the country itself in co-production with Italy. In 1976 died Ezio Gagliardo, head and soul of the Crown, and your direct contact. You left the company but you remained in Rome, founding the Cineteam with producer Aldo Raparelli and the painter-animator Manfredo Manfredi. Finally got the damn melanoma. You had always said, joking but not too much: "Diseases? If I know that someone gets sick do not go to see him, not gil phone, do not write. Gearbox city!, Or:" Dying? E'solo a chance, based on the incontestable fact that so far all the humans are dead. But I can very well be the exception. "Did you play the coward to do, or rather were too ironic to show that you were brave. But as a young man had practiced fencing, and in 1952 you had been at one step from being selected for the Olympics in Helsinki. Eri, inherently, a fighter. Death has never been a tougher opponent for you to fold. Rinunciavi not to come to the festival, partecipavi conferences, and you were kidding (not seem) fair. During periods when the hospital did soggiornavi proselytizing in favor of animation at doctors and intermieri, and every time your folder radiographs was ready, I handed her the laughing: "Here is his story-board, doctor."
You wrote and wrote advertising films, but soon premiastissimi unavailable or missing. Fables of Europe you had been a sort of itinerant artistic supervisor, but from the many tips from poor single footprint as a creator. Metamorpheus (1970), the short film for which collaborasti with the Czech Jiri Brdecka and was a powerful, emotional hymn to freedom of art, is not projected for decades. No festival casts even the 14 mini-movies a minute that realizzasti with Paul Campani, 4 in 1966, 10 in 1973: aphorisms, jokes, flashes opera or sarcastic. Brilliant, excellent. And forgotten. You, Max, you were a genius really. One of the most intelligent and creative people who have ever met in my entire life. Did inhale, correct, stimulate, to bloom, to instruct, encourage: Did you know you clear your mind of those who listened to the preconceptions gangrene years, you knew how to bring to Italy the animation of the post-disneiana Upa and the art of McLaren and Alexeieff . You were the charismatic leader of the group that sparutissimo praised and
widespread in our country's provincial and subversive ideas, on the level of style, durability and technology, the animation copyright mercantilist Sixties and Seventies developed in the rest of the world. You were the pivot of the best Italian animation festival ever organized, to Abano Terme (1970-1971), then partly transhipped in Lucca in conjunction with that on the comics. Did you have a culture that any encyclopaedist of any age would have envied. There was no matter, scientific or humanistic, that you were not familiar and on which I had a new point of view and not trivial. But-attention-you were not an author.
This is also why your movies are few left, and closed the drawers. You were a screenwriter, or rather, as I had taught him to say Brdecka in Bohemian, a dramaturg. Did you know tell the stories. And for most in the know tell better, much better, orally or in writing. In the conversation you had no equal in the world and a story heard by you, face to face, it was a gift worthy of the gods. In particular, when inanellavi anecdotes of mathematicians from the higher mind and unregulated, such as Albert Einstein, Evariste Galois, Blaise Pascal. You could not help but listen. Once you met Osvaldo Cavandoli in Piazza Duomo, Milan, at 10 am. Osvaldo was in a hurry, a business appointment. At 3 pm he had not yet moved one meter, was still there to hang from your lips. Another time, at a festival, you began to tell me about episodes, judgments and
paradoxes at 5 in the afternoon, we had dinner together, we took the coffee, we sat in the lounge of the hotel, one in the morning I challenged him: "I am 22 years younger him, I can not give in first. " At 5 am you interrupted me while explaining it the differences between Picasso and Braque, and went crashing
dress on my bed.
You were talking (with a preliminary horrible, it must be said) fancese and English, you were born of a mixed marriage, Protestant and Catholic, and all this gave you an amplitude of views and a natural grace that were rare in your generation. For me, born after the war, it was much easier to accompany you on this
path. The entertainers were your familglia. Alexandre Alexeieff, Norman McLaren, Lotte Reiniger, John and Faith Hubley, Jiri Trnka, Jiri Brdecka, Yoji Kuri, Ion Popescu-Gopo, George Dunning, all men of the School of Zagreb and in particular its producer Zelimir Matko, Jan Lenica, Peter F
