Fantomas

Fantomas is great fun - let no one say different. You get a real sense of cinematic history and technique when watching this series. I love the way that night time scenes are shot in full daylight using a blue filter to let you know it is night (there is one scene where Fandor enters a building at night and switches on the light - the screen filter changes colour and that is it).

Also the camera is completely still, which again makes you think about when moving cameras began to be introduced into film.

The other formal feature is the fact that so much was shot on location, rather than in the studio. This is great given that the Fantomas series was made in 1913 and 1914 and it is clear that the rules of shooting everything in the stuio had not been properly invented (indeed this is a real draw when watching something that dates back nearly 100 years, the rule book was barely started).

The music was specially composed in 1998 and is really sensitive, though the cutting between different types of musical accompaniment could have had more attention. I like the use of the lietmotiv when a character is introduced, or the film cuts to a character we already know; the jaunty music for Jerome Fandor sticks out particularly for some reason. I guess there is something appealing about him, and he is very rounded for a journalist sidekick to the main detective and 'good guy' Juve.

The ruthless Fantomas is the anti-hero of the piece, and like an inversion of Sherlock Holmes (whose stories were still contemporary at the time), he is constantly changing his appearance. We end up knowing nothing about Fantomas, his real identity, past etc. and so he is one of the first in the line of 'men with no name' who haunt the more fantastic side of cinema.

I am amazed about how it ends after 6 hours, and it may be that the fact it was shot as a serial made such an ending excusable. Lack of closure - well here you go...

The Fantomas series was basic commercial fare in its day, but there is a quirky edge that appealed to Surrealists and through them has had an afterlife including 1960's remakes and continuing cultual cachet. The gloves made out of human skin, the bleeding wall, the black silk masks and the constant shifting of identities make this quite a surreal epic, without trying to be (which is perhaps the true hallmark of surrealism - the strange appearing in the midst of everyday life when we least expect it).

The surreal quality to the series has been explained by the speed with which the original novels were written and transposed to the cinema. This is supposed to filter out the usual editing techniques of the conscious mind and create a kind of automatic writing. Its a neat idea and I suppose one each viewer is free to indulge or leave aside.

If you don't like all this kind of analytical stuff but are interested in an historical curio with all the stuff of fast paced detective films, then give Fantomas a go.

The Fantomas series demonstrate that modern cinema, the best of it (art direction, cinematography, character and bravado) plus the worst (schlock, flogging a dead horse to the water of a sequel/s), existed there where it began, in France, in the silent era. Don't rent if film doesn't really interest you, you'll yawn to see what you can now see played out in Bond movies or sixties caper films or in a myriad of forms with sound and colour.

Overrated in the history of film, but never mind that; This is as daft as they come. Full of illogical turns in the plot. The original colouring of the film is preserved and apart from the last of the 5 films all are in remarkably good condition.

So much of the popular film industry started from this point that it is easy to watch them in a spirit of archaeology, but far more fun to watch them in a convivial group and indulge in the supreme daftness of the whole enterprise,

Though not as good as Dr Mabuse this is still an amazing example of how most of what are taken for crime drama standards now. There is an interesting cat and mouse game between the inspector and Fantomas but you still feel that there is more favour for the criminal than the law. It does amaze you about how little dialogue you need to follow most stories.

You have to slow down a bit for this.

The pace is measured and the crimes more dastardly than horrific, but the images are pure poetry. Beautifully put together. A wonderful recreation of an era.