Italian cinema enters its first golden age with La presa di Roma (The Capture of Rome), directed in 1905 by Filoteo Alberini (1865-1937). Still hesitant at this turn of the century, Italian cinema is marked by the peplum and historical films (filoni). The producer and director Giovanni Pastrone (1883-1959) urges nevertheless that more burlesque films must be produced: between Max Linder (1883-1925) and André Deed (1879-1931), it's finally the second, a French actor, who is chosen by Pastrone to play the burlesque star under the evocative nickname of Cretinetti (diminutive of "cretin"), produced by Itala Films.

Pseudonym of Henri André Augustine Chapais, André Deed, born in Le Havre, is a music-hall singer and acrobat before turning actor-director. His career in the cinema begins when he's spotted on the stage of Paris's Châtelet Theatre by Charles Pathé who hires him for an action film, La course à la perruque (The Wig Chase-1906). Very quickly, he amuses and disconcerts all of Europe with his performances as the "village idiot", and every country gives him its own name; in France he's known as Boireau. It's only at the end of 1908 that André Deed comes to Turin, and adopts the stage name of Cretinetti, while becoming Gribouille in France, Toribio in Spain, Muller in Germany, Gloupishkine in the Soviet Union and Foolhead in England, to cite only these!

It's in Italy that André Deed discovers his true artistic personality, combining his talent an as acrobat with ingenious special effects. If he often retains his clownish appearance, he is no longer systematically the made-up clown played by Boireau. He introduces in Italy the comic genre and establishes the tradition of the series which across the Atlantic was to make the fortune of stars such as Mack Sennett (1880-1960) and Charles Chaplin (1889-1977). He directs his films himself, shoots one comedy every week, and creates the series Gribouillette for Valentina Frascaroli (1890-1955), diva of the silent pictures whom he marries in 1913.

At the end of the war, Cretinetti is "no longer in fashion": audiences prefer Chaplin or Max Linder to him. In 1921 he attempts a come-back with L'uomo meccanico (The Mechanical Man), without much success. Shortly after this film, André Deed falls into total indifference and ends his career in the cinema as prop-man at Pathé Studios.

The original music for this film was composed by Vincent Lendower in 2011 in the context of the call for proposals launched in partnership with the Sacem (Société des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs de musique – Society of authors, composers and music editors).