3. Fantômas II: Juve contre Fantômas (1913), dir. Louis Feuillade

[strange_complex]

I saw this one with lady_lugosi1313 and planet_andy at the Howard Assembly Rooms. It is the second in a series of films about the character of Fantômas, a dastardly criminal, which were themselves based on a series of novels in the Penny Dreadful tradition. Not that I knew any of that when I went into the theatre, mind. I was like, “OK, this seems to be starting part-way through the story”, but now that I realise it was part of a longer-running sequence, I understand why. In fact I think these films functioned a bit more like a TV series than like feature films as we know them today.

The print was beautifully crisp, which paid off straight away with an opening sequence just consisting of close-up shots of characters’ faces – very expressive and detailed. The story was silent, although with a lot of inter-titles and letters between characters shown on screen to convey the plot. These made me realise that I can read the amount of French which the producers of a film expect me to be able to read in the time allocated perfectly well, and I can read the amount of continental cursive script which the producers expect me to be able to read in the time allocated perfectly well, but I cannot do both. Anyway, it didn’t matter, I got the gist – basically lots of murders, fraud and deception, with chases around Paris, explosions and a train-crash along the way.

The film was also accompanied by live music from an Icelandic band called amiina, who were apparently the string section for Sigur Rós. Not that that means a great deal to me, as I have never knowingly heard any of Sigur Rós’s music, but anyway I absolutely loved what we heard on the night – driving and hypnotic and well-attuned to the film without attempting to parody the music of its original era. I must check out a bit more of their stuff.

Comments

[coyotegoth]

Edward Gorey loved these films.

[strange_complex]

Yeah, that makes some sense. I can see both the melodrama and the murderous goings-on appealing to him.

I should also have said in my review that one of the pleasures of this particular film (I can't speak directly for the others, but doubt they're much different) is the footage of early 20th century Paris, complete with people, metro stations and early cars

[lady_lugosi1313]

I have a couple of Sigur Ros albums :-)
I also think points must be awarded for most creative use of a wine bottle for avoiding detection when submerged in a tank :-)

[strange_complex]

That was clever, although he would have been in trouble if they'd taken it upon themselves to tidy things up a bit by removing the bottle from the water.