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Why this may not seem so simple
Louis Feuillade is not an easy sell. A Catholic monarchist with a military background, he was a bullfighting journalist as a journalist before becoming a screenwriter at Gaumont. Here he quickly rose to succeed Alice Guy-Blaché as artistic director in 1907 and transformed the company’s fortunes with a series of successful crime series.
Unconvinced by the benefits of stylistic experimentation, Feuillade was convinced that cinematic truth was best conveyed through melodrama. Unlike DW Griffith, however, was not one of the Belasco school of moralizing melodramatists. There is little Belle Époque nostalgia about a Feuillade epic. There is indeed something futuristic about their obsession with crime, technology, paranoia, alienation, mind control, conspiracy, terrorism and the weaknesses of the elite.
But despite their teasing modernity, Feuillade’s feuillades may seem hopelessly old-fashioned to an audience accustomed to C.G.I blockbusters. Unlike American equivalents such as The Perils of Pauline (1914), there are no chases involving galloping horses, skidding cars or thundering trains. Even cliffhangers are few and far between. This also applies to cross-sections and camera movements.
Although he eschewed the fixed theatrical scenes of some early films and abhorred sign language, Feuillade preferred to use a static camera and shoot in depth. This allowed him to block out the action to focus on key details in sequence, resulting in a visual fluidity whose languid rhythms seem at odds with the frenetic storylines. Yet they enchantingly impose the dreamy logic that made Feuillade such a favorite of the Surrealists, who believed he had captured the spirit of the new century on celluloid.
Despite their shutters, suspended ceilings, sliding panels and secret compartments, Robert-Jules Garnier’s interiors often resembled sets. But by also filming the largely unscripted action in well-known locations around Paris and the Riviera, Feuillade brought the fantastic and terrifying into the everyday. By combining the veracity of the Lumière brothers with the idiosyncrasy of Georges Méliès, he also laid the foundation for the poetic realism of the 1930s.
Even though Feuillade’s themes and style can withstand modern criticism, there is no escaping the fact that his serials require a considerable investment of time. The five episodes of Fantômas (1913 to 1914) last 337 minutes, while the twelve chapters of Judex (1916) last five hours. Even more terrifying is that the ten episodes of Les Vampires (1915 to 1916) last 417 minutes, and the twelve-part Tih-Minh (1918) a minute longer. However, time flies when you think of them as silent box sets and have yourself a good old binge.
The best place to start – Les Vampires
If archivist extraordinaire Henri Langlois hadn’t been tipped off to Gaumont’s eviction in the 1930s, the best of all silent serials would have been discarded and Olivier Assayas would never have been inspired to make the 1996 feature or the 2022 mini-film. series named after Feuillade’s most iconic creation, Irma Vep.
This anagrammatic anti-heroine first appeared in the third episode of Les Vampires and was played by Jeanne Roques, who took the stage name ‘Musidora’ from a novel by Théophile Gautier. Unlike Pearl White’s character in The Exploits of Elaine (1914), which had taken France by storm, Irma Vep was no damsel in distress, as she donned (albeit fleetingly) a black silk catsuit to roam the rooftops and stealing jewels while not assuming countless disguises. , clinging to the undercarriage of trains, or rappelling from buildings on a retracting rope. Although not the leader, she was the evil spirit of ‘Les Vampires’, the criminal gang that the courageous journalist Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé) had sworn to bring to justice with his comic sidekick, Oscar-Cloud Mazaamette (Marcel Lévesque ).
Part of the reason Irma took center stage was that Feuillade continued to lose its Grand Vampire, as he fired actor Jean Aymé for continued tardiness and Louis Leubas was called to the trenches after just two episodes. Musidora’s raised profile came in handy, however, as she was able to convince Police Prefect Louis Lépine to cancel a serial he had considered bad for wartime morale, with its contempt for authority and glorification of evil.
With the guns often audible from the Western Front, the Parisian public found relief in the rollicking action: ships were blown up, cannons were hidden in rooms on the upper floors, knockout gas caused the waves to swoon at soirées, and the beloved of the hero was laughed at. her bedroom window and raced into a getaway car. Yet nothing was pre-planned, as Feuillade discerned urban poetry and socio-sexual emancipation in the chaotic breakdown of the old order.
What to watch next
Despite not being nearly as iconic as Les Vampires, there are those who believe that the awkward orientalist Tih-Minh is the superior work. Making exciting use of the winding roads, rocks, castles, roofs and quarries of the Côte d’Azur, the 12 episodes are action-packed, featuring explorer Jacques d’Athys (René Cresté), servants Placido (Georges Biscot) and Rosette (Jeanne) Rollette) and English diplomat Sir Francis Gray (Édouard Mathé) strive to keep Tih-Minh (Mary Harald) and a code-laden tome out of the clutches of the shape-shifting triumvirate of German spy Dr. Gilson (Gaston Michel), Hindu occultist Kistna (Louis Leubas) and the clairvoyant Marquise Dolorès de Santa Fe (Georgette Faraboni), who are on the hunt for a MacGuffinesque Indochinese treasure.
No synopsis can ever do justice to a Feuillade series because they rely so much on the author’s showmanship, anarchic inventiveness, and oneiric atmosphere in depicting the collapse of leadership and moral authority in unpredictable times. But Feuillade was the master of the rocambolesque setting, as evidenced by the scenes involving armed nuns, spy dogs, powerful snakes and the zombified female inhabitants of the Villa Circé cellar.
Cresté and Leubas had already met as the avenging nobleman Jacques de Tremeuse and the murderous banker Henri Favraux in Judex, whose black-caped crime fighter is the precursor to so many comic book heroes, with his dark secrets, hidden lair and ingenious gadgets. Keen to provide escapist entertainment and avoid offending the authorities again, Feuillade nevertheless blurred the moral lines surrounding Judex’s whimsy, while also reveling in the seductive wickedness of Musidora’s predatory adventurer Diana Monti. The result is a barrage of bizarre tricks and diabolical incidents, the sheer far-fetchedness of which was lovingly matched in Georges Franju’s Judex (1963).
While the later chapter plays were all the work of Feuillade, Fantômas drew on the 32 bestsellers of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. More of an episodic film than a series, this five-part installment centers on an evil mastermind (René Navarre), whose reign of terror against the establishment confuses the Lestrade-like Inspector Juve (Edmund Breon) and his journalistic cohort Jérôme Fandor (Georges Melchior). brings. – who were later played by Louis de Funès and Jean Marais in André Hunebelle’s parodic feature film trilogy in the mid-1960s.
Looking at Fantômas, you can discover the roots of film noir in the réalisme fantastique that Feuillade invented to convey the waking nightmare of Paris unable to combat a dastardly criminal genius – one who revels in his villainy and elusiveness . The mix of bleak psychology and blood-curdling spectacle also leaves superhero cinema forever in Feuillade’s shadow and in his debt.
Where not to start
About 500 Feuillade films are known to have survived. But since the series La Nouvelle Mission de Judex (1917), Barrabas (1919) and Parisette (1921) are wildly unavailable (even online), there is little point in starting with them. There are ten pairs of shorts available at DVD in the Gaumont Treasures collection, but even these offer little clue as to why Feuillade was removed from French film history after Louis Delluc and his Impressionist acolytes excoriated him for cheapening the seventh art. How wrong they were.
Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials 1913 to 1918 is now available on Blu-ray.