3. Fantômas II: Juve contre Fantômas (1913), dir. Louis Feuillade
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.
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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.
Dreamwidth version |
comments | Leave a comment