In 1970, Caprino and his small team of collaborators, started work on a 25 minutes TV special, which would eventually become The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix. Based on a series of books by Norwegian cartoonist and author Kjell Aukrust, it featured a group of eccentric characters all living in the small village of Pinchcliffe. The TV special was a collection of sketches based on Aukrust's books, with no real story line. After 1.5 years of work, it was decided that it didn't really work as a whole, so production on the TV special was stopped (with the exception of some very short clips, no material from it has ever been seen by the public), and Caprino and Aukrust instead wrote a screenplay for a feature film using the characters and environments that had already been built.
The result was The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, which stars Theodore Rimspoke (No. Reodor Felgen) and his two assistants, Sonny Duckworth (No. Solan Gundersen), a cheerful and optimistic bird, and Lambert (No. Ludvig), a nervous, pessimistic and melancholic hedgehog. Theodore works as a bicycle repairman, though he spends most of his time inventing weird Rube Goldberg-like contraptions. One day, the trio discover that one of Theodore's former assistants, Rudolph Gore-Slimey (Norwegian: Rudolf Blodstrupmoen), has stolen his design for a race car engine, and has become a world champion Formula One driver.
Sonny secures funding from an Arab oil sheik who happens to be vacationing in Pinchcliffe, and the trio then build a gigantic racing car, Il Tempo Gigante – a fabulous construction with two engines, radar and its own blood bank. Theodore then enters a race, and ends up winning, beating Gore-Slimey despite his attempts at sabotage.
The film was made in 3.5 years by a team of approximately 5 people. Caprino directed and animated, Bjarne Sandemose (Caprino's principal collaborator throughout his career) built the sets and the cars, and was in charge of the technical side, Ingeborg Riiser modeled the puppets and Gerd Alfsen made the costumes and props.
When it came out in 1975, The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix was an enormous success in Norway, selling 1 million tickets in its first year of release. It remains the biggest box office hit of all time in Norway (Caprino Studios claim it has sold 5.5 million tickets to date) and was also released in many other countries.
To help promote the film abroad, Caprino and Sandemose built a full scale replica of Il Tempo Gigante that is legal for public roads, but is usually exposited at Hunderfossen Familiepark.
Read more about this topic: Ivo Caprino
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