Fantomas 1913

[Narcisa Flierl]

Fantmas is actually a series of five films, released here by Kino, the shortest of which is 57 minutes (the opening film, Fantmas in the Shadow of the Guillotine) and the longest, 97 minutes (the third entry, The Murderous Corpse). The films were released over a two-year period from 1913 to 1914 and were restored in 2006. That edition, also released by Kino, has now been given a 4K restoration through the efforts of Gaumont and le Centre National du Cinma, in collaboration with the Cinmathque franaise.

I must also mention the musical score, which is absolutely incredible, far greater and extensive than I had expected. I was not prepared for a score quite this symphonic, but the richness and variety of the music elevates the films to an even higher level. Make no mistake, this is top-notch stuff.

Inspector Juve (Edmund Bron) confronts Lady Beltham, Fantmas' mistress (Rene Carl). After the theft, Inspector Juve pays a visit to Lady Beltham. Finding a name in an address book, he asks: Who is Mr. Gurn? She tells Fantomas afterward, who sends three suitcases to Johannesburg. Juve discovers in one of the suitcases the corps of Lord Beltham. He discovers Gurn is Fantomas.

Rene Carl (1875-1954) was a French actress and director, best known for the over 200 films she did at Gaumont, mostly directed by Louis Feuillade. Best known she is for her part as lady Beltham in Feuillades serial Fantmas.

In the cinema, he first appeared during the silent period, in French films (including many shorts) released from 1909 onward, where he was most often credited as Edmond Bron and almost all directed by Louis Feuillade, at the Gaumont company. He played e.g. the father of child comedian Bout-de-Zan (Ren Poyen) a few times, while in the early feature La Tare (1911) he already acted opposite Rene Carl, the future Lady Beltham of the Fantomas serial. Popular Breon was as Inspector Juve in the five films Feuillade made about Fantmas (with Ren Navarre in the title role), including Juve contre Fantmas (1913) and Le Faux Magistrat (1914). Other films by the same Louis Feuillade include Les Vampires (1916, with Musidora and douard Math) and Barrabas (1920, with Fernand Herrmann and douard Math). His last French film was L'cuyre by Lonce Perret (with Jean Angelo), released in 1922.

Then he began a second period on the screen with his first British film (and last silent one) released in 1928, A Little Bit of Fluff by Wheeler Dryden and Jess Robbins (with Sydney Chaplin and Betty Balfour). This was followed by his first American film (and first talkie) in 1930, Howard Hawks' Dawn Patrol (with Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).

In the 1930s, he was mainly involved in British films, including Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Don Juan (1934, with Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon) and Jack Conway's A Yank at Oxford (1938, with Robert Taylor and Maureen O'Sullivan).

In 1940, the year his last British film was released, Edmund Breon moved to the United States because of the Second World War. From then on, he made exclusively American films (released from 1944), the last being Lewis Allen's At Sword's Point (with Cornel Wilde and Maureen O'Hara), released in 1952, the year after his death (1951). Other films include Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (1944, with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett), Roy William Neill's Dressed to Kill (1946, with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) and Richard Thorpe's Challenge to Lassie's (1949, with Edmund Gwenn and Donald Crisp).

Thirty-two Fantmas novels by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre were published from 1911 through 1913. By the time Feuillade launched the film version in May of 1913, the book cycle was winding down; in La Fin du Fantmas (1913), the master criminal dies, at least for a while. Souvestre died in 1914, but the prodigious Allain revived the series and the villain during the 1920s.

To show the elevator entry on different floors he reuses the same set. This is motivated realistically, since hotels look more or less the same on different floors. But if the camera were framing every elevator shot exactly the same way, we would have weird jump cuts when cutting from floor to floor, and the use of the same set would be more apparent. So Feuillade not only re-labels each landing at the top of the frame, but he shifts his camera position slightly, moving the framing rightward in the string of shots showing the elevator descending to the ground floor.

Needless to say, the earliest phases of this shot would be unintelligible on a stage; for most members of the audience, the other actors would block Juve. Recall as well that this was accomplished in an era when directors and cinematographers could not look through the lens to see exactly how the configuration would appear onscreen.

The first of the Fantmas films directed by Louis Feuillade in 1913 and 1914 opens on a shot of a shifty-eyed Ren Navarre in various incarnations of the arch-villain, each dissolving into the other. It is a device he reuses in subsequent films in the series to introduce the disparate forms that the Genius of Evil will take over the course of the story.

Loosely based on the events of the first novel, the film skips over the gruesome murder at the beginning of the book which introduces Charles Rambert, the young man who befriends Inspector Juve, becomes a journalist, and is rechristened Jerome Fandor.

After failing to arrest Chaleck (who breaks away from the grasp by throwing off a set of false arms!), Juve and Fandor discover that Fantmas and Lady Beltham have been meeting at her villa, so they sneak into a vent pipe and overhear the Lord of Terror and his mistress planning their getaway.

Meanwhile, in a second-hand shop run by Mother Toulouche, we meet Cranajour, her simpleminded assistant, and Nibet, the crooked prison guard from the first installment who helped Fantmas escape from jail. Toulouche is a fence, selling stolen goods out of her second-hand shop, hiding hot merchandise in her cellar.

Fantmas, in his all-black costume, drugs the painter Jacques Dollon and frames him for the murder of the Baroness de Vibraye. Police arrive and arrest Dollon. He is brought before a judge, fingerprinted, and locked in a cell where Nibet, an accomplice of Fantmas, strangles him. Dollon is found dead, but soon after his corpse disappears.

Fandor has himself locked up in order to discover how a corpse could disappear from a holding cell. He finds his way to the courthouse roof, where he is spotted by Cranajour. Fandor then descends from the roof through an air duct. He runs into Nibet and Cranajour who are picking up contraband from a sailor. Nibet wants to kill Fandor, but the simpleminded Cranajour kicks him into the Seine before he can act.

Fandor returns to the boarding house to recover the mysterious document. While he is there, Fantmas and Nibet arrive in the guise of police officials with a search warrant. Fandor hides in a chest which the ersatz investigators confiscate and take to an apartment where Fandor discovers the body of Thomery, the sugar magnate before escaping.

Days later, the police have still not found the body of the missing bank messenger and are informed that a famous American detective has announced his imminent arrival to assist in clearing up the matter. Meanwhile, in an apartment across town, a worker drives a nail into a wall, which then proceeds to bleed profusely. Police are called, and they discover hidden in the wall the corpse of the missing bank messenger. Then, the worker who discovered the body reveals himself to be Tom Bob, the American detective.

On the outskirts of Paris, Fandor eavesdrops on a gathering of criminals. It is Paulet and a few other ruffians demanding their share of the loot from Pre Moche. The old scoundrel relays to them a message from Fantmas, promising their share of the loot soon.

Knowing Fantmas will try to make off with the money raised by Lady Beltham, Juve and Fandor intercept him at the villa of the Grand Duchess, but, once again, the villain escapes when the detective and the journalist fall into a mantrap!

Fantomas ist ein fnfteiliges franzsisches Serial von Louis Feuillade aus den Jahren 1913/14 nach der Romanserie Fantmas von Pierre Souvestre und Marcel Allain. Lon Gaumont erwarb die Filmrechte im Jahr 1913 fr 6000 Francs und beauftragte den knstlerischen Leiter Feuillade mit der Umsetzung.[1]

Paris, 1913: The Princess Sonia Danidoff checks into the Royal Palace Hotel late at night. After she picks up an envelope containing 120,000 Francs in cash from the front desk, the elevator operator takes her to her room on the fourth floor (we see the elevator ascend all the way to make its importance clear). She puts the envelope and a string of pearls in a drawer and leaves the room to change into a nightgown.

Fantmas was an international hit: in addition to European success, the films were imported to the Americas and proved very popular (at the time, at least). William Fox handled the series in the United States and produced his own Americanized Fantomas serial (now lost) in 1920. Prior to the explosion of costumed superheroes in the 1940s, the serials and pulp magazines were full of villains (and sometimes heroes) who looked like they all shopped out of the same catalog for members of secret tribunals: it was a standard-issue costume.

(Interestingly, Fantmas is seen only once in the film series in his other iconic costume, the eveningwear and domino mask seen on the cover of the first book and made famous as a popular poster, and that is as a daydream in which he appears to Inspector Juve, taunting him and daring him to arrest him.)

In the Fantmas series, the ubiquity of masks, assumed identities, and deadly secrets is thrilling to watch, but becomes oppressive after a while. The setting also contributes to this feeling: beneath the modern Paris of neat row houses and elegant society are the catacombs and secret passages through cellars and abandoned warehouses, and above are the moonlit rooftops over which black-clad cat burglars and assassins nimbly make their way. The secret world of cutpurses, fences, and killers is separated from ordinary life by only the thinnest of membranes, and the nave forget it at their peril. Although largely filmed on location in and around the city, the persistence of shadows and crumbling, empty places anticipates the stark, agonistic productions of German expressionism that would arise in the next decade. Paris la Fantmas is a place full of wonders, but dangerous in which to linger.

c80f0f1006