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I was quite happy to receive the famous Fantomas from Kino, but am having an odd reaction to it. Where I instantly loved Judex, Fantomas is taking time to grow on me. I've had to watch each film in the series at least twice, as I seem to instantly forget what has happened in each installment. Whereas Judex was vivid in my memory and still is, not having watched Judex for over a year. Fantomas is different, it seems somehow slower, and lacking in the "fun" of Judex, and of Les Vampires for that matter. I'm not at all saying that I don't like Fantomas, as I do, but there is some sort of odd disconnect going on with Fantomas and me. Perhaps I am so far advanced into my "Golden years" this is to be expected. But I plan on re-watching Judex after I finish Fantomas,just to compare. I am presently watching the next to last 'Fantomas vs. Fantomas. I've already seen it, but I'll be damned if I can remember a thing about it.
Sp

Spiritus wrote:I was quite happy to receive the famous Fantomas from Kino, but am having an odd reaction to it. Where I instantly loved Judex, Fantomas is taking time to grow on me. I've had to watch each film in the series at least twice, as I seem to instantly forget what has happened in each installment. Whereas Judex was vivid in my memory and still is, not having watched Judex for over a year. Fantomas is different, it seems somehow slower, and lacking in the "fun" of Judex, and of Les Vampires for that matter. I'm not at all saying that I don't like Fantomas, as I do, but there is some sort of odd disconnect going on with Fantomas and me. Perhaps I am so far advanced into my "Golden years" this is to be expected. But I plan on re-watching Judex after I finish Fantomas,just to compare. I am presently watching the next to last 'Fantomas vs. Fantomas. I've already seen it, but I'll be damned if I can remember a thing about it.
Sp

You're not the only one. I easily get distracted with the street scenes, forgetting all about the plot and also have to go back and watch them a second time. Though it came earlier, I was also expecting too much based on seeing Les Vampires and Judex beforehand. Besides, this Fantomas is supposed to be a master criminal that has everyone guessing who he is? He's no Dr. Mabuse that's for sure and I'm starting to care less. Looks more like a burglar with delusions of grandeur.

I just finished the Fantomas series myself. I found it interesting, but the plot holes, jumps in logic, and missing elements (I suppose) made it a bit frustrating. I do love the score on the Kino edition, and I don't usually really hear them.

I've moved on to The Perils of Pauline, and plan to watch Les Vampires later.

I imagine to undertake the chore
of watching either of these in a
single sitting (much less episodic as intended)
one has to be prepared to amass
the sensibilities of a typical citizen of
France (preferably urban) circa mid-teens
of last century to get it.

Even then you can be among the ones that
didn't get it.

I have a painful memory of Judex from viewing
the PBS documentary The Amazing Years of Cinema.
Several scenes were show in dead silence (not room
tone silence but the type achieved by covering the
microphone with a heavy cloth). Serials were a genre
that required music.

That series had rare footage from
silent films made in Europe.

I haven't finished watching Fantomas but I too am mildly disappointed- disillusioned is maybe the better term. Certainly the whole concept of Fantomas the remorseless master criminal is great- and the covers of the novels are marvelous images which promise intrigue and excitement. In their time the audience ate it up with a spoon.

Problem is, it's not a fresh new experience to me. Fantomas is a comparatively primitive film- it has long scenes of people talking in rooms punctuated by episodes of action. Comparing it to Les Vampires and Judex is tough- Feuliade's technique improved rapidly with succeeding films and by that time he probably would have regarded Fantomas as something he could have done better.

I love the primitivity of FANTOMAS, and all exterior shots, especially in the streets...

I admit, I always love to see the cars and trains. And when I realized I was looking at a city street scene in Belgium in 1913... that was great!

Personally, I found Les Vampires a very trying experience. I just couldn't get into it and never re-visited the film. For that reason, I've passed on both Judex and Fantomas.

Personally, I found Les Vampires a very trying experience. I just couldn't get into it and never re-visited the film. For that reason, I've passed on both Judex and Fantomas.

I've not seen FANTOMAS yet, but it sounds like an acquired taste so while I'd like to see it I may wait for a TCM screening before deciding whether to get the DVD. I thought LES VAMPIRES was rather slow getting into, and certainly primitive cinema in the early episodes, but it got better technically and more interesting dramatically with each successive episode. JUDEX is much better overall and probably easier to watch for those unused to the early teens cinematic styles.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://hpr1.com/film

T0m M wrote:Personally, I found Les Vampires a very trying experience. I just couldn't get into it and never re-visited the film. For that reason, I've passed on both Judex and Fantomas.

Possibly echoing what others have said...

Les Vampires was somewhat tedious for me.

Judex, on the other hand, I found lots of fun.

Fantomas? Somewhere in between.

Steve

I was really underwhelmed by Fantomas when I watched it last year. My expectations were very high after Les Vampires, but it didn't resonate nearly as much. I think Fantomas as master criminal is really compelling, but it feels like there was a much tighter story in there somewhere and it all gets lost.

I really love Judex though. That was so much fun and so different in tone to Les Vampires, yet just as compelling. I found Musidora even more hypnotic in this one than her turn as Irma Vep.

Anyone with thoughts on Tih Minh? I was able to slog through a muddy, soundless copy with my rudimentary French skills and a French-English dictionary, and found it pretty interesting regardless. I'd love to see the new restoration on DVD...and don't get me started on Barabbas.

Part of the issue is that you may suffering from a certain level of critical facilities recovering. I too first encountered Feuillade with LES VAMPIRES and was overwhelmed by the dreamlike logic of the entire show, like when they pull a spare Irma Vep from a trunk. How weird and wonderful.

But as time went on and I saw more Feuillade, I realized that a lot of what I had taken as logical in its own melodramatic French way was that they were making it up as they went along and when they wrote themselves into a corner they would come up with a cheap out and get on with it. Eventually you come to recognize the sloppy improvisation for what it is and enjoy it, like one of his earlier movies where they apparently had a balloon, so in order to have an excuse to use it, they decided to balloon over to a mailbox....

Bob

I have read somewhere, that the frequency of sudden deaths (sometimes of just recently introduced characters) in LES VAMPIRES is due to many of the male actors being drafted to the front.

In those serials they invented their shit as they went along, for sure. But that is part of their charm.

What I love about FANTOMAS and even more so about VAMPIRES, is the fact that they have so many location and exterior shots. It is as if you have a window into Paris 1915, and you see all these weird and funny things happening, on usually strangely deserted streets and locations. Somewhere in the back is a war, but nobody mentions it. There is also something playful and tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing. The cast members are obviously having fun and working very well together. Jacques Rivette frequently picked up on this playfullness in his similarily deserted and mysterious Paris movies, and occassionally directly invoked Feuillade.

As much as I love VAMPIRES, I got a bit bored by JUDEX. The "pilot" episode is great (Franju basically used only this for his wonderful remake), but then it gets quite tedious.

I agree about JUDEX- the whole romantic subplot bogs down, fortunately Musidora and the gang keep things moving while Judex moons. The serial gets rather slow in the middle but picks up speed at the end. LES VAMPIRES never really has an overall plot so it's got a breezy "What the heck" quality to it, Feulliade constantly improvising something to wake up the audience.

I'll watch some more FANTOMAS tonight

If you take a film historian's viewpoint and compare Fantomas with other films from 1913 it's absolutely fantastic, particularly the first episode that came out in the spring when feature length stuff was a relative novelty. Very quickly you get into gripping scenes. Unusual for the time.

If it doesn't hold up well against Les Vampires and Judex, it shouldn't. Cinema was advancing rapidly even with a war on. Of the three, I like Judex best, precisely because of its enduring romantic angle, but the film does not stand out as far above its 1916-17 peers as Fantomas did in 1913-14.

Now when is Tih Minh coming out on video?

I'm not sure if the whole newer is better approach always works. Especially since we like silent movies.

My order is Fantomas>Les Vampires>Judex

I just read yesterday that a new FANTOMAS is in preproduction with Vincent Cassel to play Fantomas, with Jean Reno also starring.

Finally got to watch Fantomas last week.

My first was Les Vampires which I really enjoyed for its verve, elan, creativity, and sheer cheek. My second film was Judex, and it was quite disappointing ... to the extent that I fast-forwarded through the entire romance story which comprises more than half of the film.

Fantomas falls somewhere in between, a lot closer to Vampires in both spirit and quality/enjoyability. As someone else remarked, Fantomas himself seems to be nothing more than a glorified thief/bully/murderer rather than a madman plotting to take over the world like a prototypal The Brain, but I think this adds to the fun because it makes him a more credible person, rather than Lex Luthor going up against Superman Juve.

The lack of love interest eliminates any possibility of the serial lapsing into Judex weltzschmerz, thank goodness.

I love the way they merely flip a desk from the right side of the screen to the left side and instantly convert the world's least convincing police-station into the world's least convincing newsroom. I love even more the way all the reporters shake hands formally every time they enter that newsroom!

One question: we're told in a title that sequences have been taken from one chapter in another Fantomas serial and inserted into Fantomas IV to cover up lost sections, so does that mean there was more to the serial than the five chapters in Kino's edition?

Feuillade was a phenomenal filmmaker. The stuff he was doing in 1910-14 seems way ahead of even Griffith, and that's all in spite of being saddled with the immovable cameras of the era. Although who could possibly forget the elevating shot he managed to work in to create the illusion of a moving camera!

The shorts in the 10-minute documentary further whetted my appetite for his other films.

Jim