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byneddiedingo · 2 years

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Michel Vitold and Channing Pollock in Judex (Georges Franju, 1963)

Cast: Channing Pollock, Francine Bergé, Edith Scob, Michel Vitold, Jacques Jouanneau, Théo Sarapo, Sylva Koscina. Screenplay: Jacques Champreux, Francis Lacassin, based on a screenplay by Arthur Bernède and Louis Feuillade. Cinematography: Marcel Fradetal. Art direction: Robert Giordani. Music: Maurice Jarre.

Judex is, like Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the subsequent Indiana Jones sequels, an hommage more than a spoof. In both cases, the filmmakers were affectionately mimicking films of their youth: the cliff-hanging serials that often accompanied feature films. Unlike Spielberg, director Georges Franju had a particular director in mind: Louis Feuillade, who crafted adventure thrillers usually involving master criminals like the titular protagonist of Fantômas (1913) and the sinister Irma Vep of Les Vampires (1915-16). The original Judex serial of 1916 featured a masked crime-fighter, a figure that became increasingly popular after Douglas Fairbanks adapted a magazine story in The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920), leading to numerous comic books and movies about swashbucklers and superheroes using disguises to protect their secret identity. The archetype became so prevalent that eventually it was subject to amused mockery, as in the camped-up Batman TV series of 1966-68. But Franju isn't out to mock Feuillade's serials so much as to recapture some of the innocent thrills of the original, with sets and costumes evoking a pre-World War I naïveté. Judex (Channing Pollock) is a do-gooder who in the film is trying to expose the fraud and murder committed by a wealthy banker, Favraux (Michel Vitol). He has somehow disguised himself (with an obvious fake beard) as Favraux's secretary, Vallières-- the film never bothers with backstories of its characters, so we don't know how Judex/Vallières gained Favraux's confidence and trust -- and manages to fake Favraux's death and hide him away in an elaborate dungeon, where he watches Favraux via an improbably early version of television. But Judex's plans -- which are not entirely clear in any case -- are complicated by his adversary, Diana Monti (Francine Bergé), who has herself been operating as the governess for Favraux's granddaughter. And so on, through an increasingly intricate series of plot twists, clashes, escapes, last-minute rescues, and all of the trappings of the genre. It's really a good deal of fun, though it occasionally goes a little slack, especially if you're not in the mood for such Gallic nostalgia. Marcel Fradetel's black-and-white cinematography mimics the silent-movie style to the mark, even using old-fashion iris shots for transition, and at one point having the comic-relief detective, Cocantin (Jacques Jouanneau), peer through the keyhole, with what he witnesses viewed through a keyhole-shaped aperture. Judex is played by an American magician, Channing Pollock, who performs some sleight-of-hand involving doves. A very handsome presence but no actor, Pollock was hyped as a new Rudolph Valentino, but without success.

#Judex #Georges Franju #Michel Vitold #Channing Pollock

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thinkingimages · 3 years

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Musidora dans "Judex" de Louis Feuillade, 1916 Cinémathèque Française

#Musidora #Judex #Louis Feuillade #1916 #Cinémathèque Française #Cinematic Still #Film #Still #Film Still

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aurasandseizures · 4 years

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Judex de Louis Feuillade – 1916, Gaumont

#Judex #Louis Feuillade #1916 #Cinematic Still #Film #Still

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xenoshock · 6 years

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Judex (1916) dir. Louis Feuillade

Little did they know, electronic surveillance would become real.

#judex #Louis Feuillade #Silent Film #Silent Cinema #1916 #my gifs #Film History #René Cresté

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yesterdanereviews · 6 years

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Judex (1916)

Film review #316

SYNOPSIS: A notorious banker named Favraux, whose practices have taken advantage of numerous people, receives a letter from a man calling himself Judex, who claims that if he does not donate half his fortune, he will meet his end. With Favraux’s seeming death by poisioning at the hands of Judex, Favraux’s daughter renounces her Father’s fortune and beings a humble life, as Judex silently watches her from the shadows to protect her. However, a pair of criminals find out that Favraux is still alive and being held by Judex, and seek to free him so they can hold him for ransom...

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Judex is a 1916 French silent-film serial consisting of twelve chapters. The film begins showing Favraux, an accountant who has swindled many people out of their money over his career, driving some of them to suicide. When an elderly man named Pierre Kerjean comes by his house asking for help, Favraux turns him away and later nearly runs him over. Favraux’s assistant Vallieres hands him a letter saying that Favraux’s actions have ruined many people’s lives, and if he does not donate half his ill-gotten fortune to the public assistance bureau by 10pm tomorrow, he will meet his end. The letter is signed only by the name “Judex”, and Favraux sees fit to ignore the threat. However, sure enough, at 10pm he collapses and seemingly dies. His daughter Jacqueline, learning of her Father’s misdeeds, renounces his fortune and goes to make her own money with her son Little Jean. But it turns out that Favraux is not dead, he was only put into a comatose state, and Judex has decided to keep him locked in captivity for the rest of his days. Judex also decides to watch over Jacqueline, as it seems there are a pair of criminals who are after her. The story of this serial is quite complex, and there is plenty of content to enjoy. With each installment, some of the characters face new problems and situations, and this affects the story as a whole in such a way that nothing feels like it is there just to fill out time. Each of the characters get focused on at different points, so they all seem well developed, which allows a viewer to really get to grips with their motivations, and connect with them on an emotional level.

The themes of redemption and vengeance are dominant through this film, and are explored thoroughly, leading to some dramatic and emotional scenes at its peak. We learn that Judex is actually Jacques de Tremeuse, the son of a man who was swindled by Favraux, causing him to commit suicide, after which his Mother made Judex and his brother swear to avenge their Father’s death, and it is revealed that he is Vallieres, and got the job as Favraux’s assistant to get close to him. He becomes unable to fulfil his oath to his Mother by killing Favraux when he fallls in love with Jacqueline, and he must convince his Mother to forgive Favraux and let him go back to his daughter. There are all sorts of complexities in the story that I could go into, but they all centre around these themes. The characters all have their own personalities, from the heroic yet troubled Judex, to the villainous Diana Monti, who herself deceived Favraux to be hired as his housekeeper to get at his fortune. There’s also the comedic Cocantin, who provides light relief alongside the Liquorice Kid (who’s a pretty good child actor). There’s not a poorly developed character in here, and they all play a significant part in the film.

I think one of the most interesting things about this film is that Judex could be considered one of the first proto-superheroes: he has a hidden base full of gadgets and strange devices, he has a secret identity running about in a cape, and a complex backstory that could rival Bruce Wayne. It all adds up to an exciting serial that has high drama, emotion and action backed up by strong characters that can appeal to fans of all genres. Definitely one of the better serials I have seen.

#movie #movie review #judex #serial #film #film review #silent film #1916 film

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pariswasawoman · 2 years

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Jeanne Roques (23 February 1889 – 11 December 1957), known professionally as Musidora, was a French actress, film director, and writer. She is best known for her acting in silent films, and rose to public attention for roles in the Louis Feuillade serials Les Vampires as Irma Vep and in Judex as Marie Verdier. Born Jeanne Roques to music composer and theorist of socialism Jacques Roques and painter and feminist Adèle Porchez, Musidora began her career in the arts at an early age, writing her first novel at the age of fifteen and acting on the stage with the likes of Colette, one of her lifelong friends. During the very early years of French cinema Musidora began a professional collaboration with the highly successful French film director Louis Feuillade. She made her film debut in Les miseres de l'aiguille, directed by Raphael Clamour, in January 1914. The film highlights the problems of the urban women in the French working-class, and presents a new representation of the female even by the working-class movement in the early 20th century in France. Adopting the moniker of Musidora (Greek for "gift of the muses"), after the heroine in Théophile Gautier's novel Fortunio, and affecting a unique vamp persona that would be popularized in the United States by actress Theda Bara at about the same time, Musidora soon found a foothold in the nascent medium of moving pictures. With her heavily kohled dark eyes, somewhat sinister make-up, pale skin and exotic wardrobes, Musidora quickly became a highly popular and instantly recognizable presence of European cinema. Beginning in 1915, Musidora began appearing in the successful Feuillade-directed serial Les Vampires as Irma Vep (an anagram of "vampire"), a cabaret singer, opposite Édouard Mathé. Contrary to the title, Les Vampires was not actually about vampires, but about a criminal-gang-run-secret-society inspired by the exploits of the real-life Bonnot Gang. Vep, besides playing a leading role in the Vampires' crimes, also spends two episodes under the hypnotic control of Moreno, a rival criminal who makes her his lover and induces her to assassinate the Grand Vampire. The series was an immediate success with French cinema-goers and ran in 10 installments until 1916. After the Les Vampires serial, Musidora starred as adventuress, Diana Monti (aka governess "Marie Verdier") in Judex, another popular Feuillade serial filmed in 1916 but delayed for release until 1917. Though not intended to be avant-garde, Les Vampires and Judex were lauded by Louis Aragon and Andre Breton in the 1920s for the films' elements of surprise, fantasy/science fiction, unexpected juxtapositions and visual non sequiturs. Filmmakers Fritz Lang, Luis Buñuel, Georges Franju, Alain Resnais, and Olivier Assayas have cited Les Vampires and Judex as influencing them in their desires to become directors. At a time when many women in the film industry were relegated to acting, Musidora achieved a degree of success as a producer and director. Musidora became a film producer and director under the tutelage of her mentor, Louis Feuillade. Between the late 1910s and early 1920s, she directed ten films, all of which are lost with the exception of two: 1922's Soleil et Ombre and 1924's La Terre des Taureaux, both of which were filmed in Spain. In Italy, she produced and directed La Flamme Cachee based on the work of her friend Colette. In the same year, she co-wrote (with Colette) and co-directed (with Eugenio Perego) La vagabonda based on Colette's novel of the same name. After her career as an actress faded, she focused on writing and producing. Her last film was an homage to her mentor Feuillade titled La Magique Image in 1950, which she both directed and starred in. Late in her life, she would occasionally work in the ticket booth of the Cinémathèque Française—few patrons realized that the older woman in the foyer might be starring in the film they were watching. Musidora died in Paris in 1957 and was buried in the Cimetière de Bois-le-Roi.

#musidora #jeanne roques

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Who is Judex?

On paper, Judex is a proto-Shadow and little else. He is a mysterious avenger who wears a cloak and dark hat while enacting retribution on evildoers. He is a master of disguise, has a group of ex-criminals and circus people acting as agents helping him, has high tech devices, mysterious headquarters, incredible abilities, etc. He trains a large pack of dogs and a small flock of birds to be his helpers, he has a main sidekick in his brother Roger. He even has a very superhero-esque backstory where his father was driven to suicide by the machinations of an evil banker, and his mother forced him and his brother to swear dedicating themselves wholesale to avenging their father, and who now metes out dark justice, not above poisoning his enemies or walling them up alive, and who ultimately finds redemption thanks to his loved one.

Contrary to what you might assume, Judex was not one of the influences on The Shadow, as there appears to be no evidence the 1916 serial was released in the US (The New York Board of Censorship records contain no listing for Judex) or that Gibson was even aware of it’s existence even if it was available to him, and he’s always been very open about all of his influences that went into The Shadow (most of which had nothing to do with detective characters, by his own admission he barely read those kinds of stories and was far more inspired by the likes of Dracula, King Arthur and the Oz stories as well as his own experiences with Houdini and Blackstone in creating the character)

But Judex and The Shadow are very often connected by virtue of being so similar to each other. The S&S Shadow Comics of the 40s were even published in France as Judex stories, with nothing about their contents changed at all other than the name of the titular character. Even the identity of Lamont Cranston stayed, confusing fans who were previously familiar with Judex’s real identity being Jacques de Tremeuse.

(Even Shiwan Khan was there)

Nowadays, Judex largely exists as a public domain Shadow. He’s shown up in stories from the Tales of The Shadowmen anthologies, which largely use him as an “almost” Shadow, a diet Shadow that you can use willy nilly without pissing off Conde Nast’s lawyers. It’s hard to really think of him having utility for much else.

Thing is, Judex is not The Shadow. It’s the differences between the two, and the unique situation of Judex himself, that makes him interesting, on his own and in the context of The Shadow.

Judex is a bridge in more ways than one, joining the he detective and costumed adventurer heroes from the turn-of-the-century as well as the pulp characters and superheroes of the slightly later 20th century. Judex was also a turning point in the career of serial filmmaker Louis Feuillade, who had achieved great popularity with his Fantomas and Les Vampires serials, and had attracted a ton of criticism for films that glorified master criminals. So in turn, Feuillade and writer Arthur Bernède created Judex as a character ostensibly in the “master criminal” mold of Fantomas, but who would be a good-natured promoter of wholesome values.

Still a black-clad figure of mystery and intrigue moving outside the bounds of society and commanding fear with his great powers, but only going after evildoers. A mastermind of crime who wouldn’t upset the authorities boycotting the previous films. It’s fitting that Judex largely exists as a diet Shadow nowadays, because the whole point of his creation was for him to be a diet Fantomas. A family friendly Fantomas. It was that connection to Fantomas that ultimately got Georges Franju to accept making a Judex film in 1963.

Strangely enough, I actually discovered Judex long before The Shadow, due to the Georges Franju film. Eyes Without a Face was a formative experience for me at a young age, and I was compelled to look at the rest of his filmography, which led to me watching Judex. At the time, the scene of the titular character entering a party and performing magic tricks with that eerie bird mask was extremely captivating, and yet, I remembered absolutely nothing else about the film. I found it too slow, clinically detached and drowsy, I could not finish it without falling asleep, and never finished it then. Only years later did I ever finish the film, and honestly, that ballroom scene is still the only thing that really, really lives rent free in my brain.

Franju’s film abandoned all pretense of giving any sort of character to it’s titular hero. Franju himself primarily wanted to do a Fantomas film first and foremost, but when he couldn’t attain the rights, he settled for Judex, a character he didn’t like very much. He even stated he viewed Judex as a villain, who envelops the other characters in his darkness. Franju’s Judex is impressive only in the initial scene where he performs the magic trick in the bird mask. The backstory of the original Judex is hardly acknowledged, and past that scene, and past the scene when Favraux’s daughter Jacqueline catches him in the act of changing out of the secret identity he has assumed for much of the movie, whatever mystique he may have had is gone, and he gradually fades more and more into pretext as the film’s female protagonists take center stage, the main drama of the film and it’s central poetic scenes really played out between the two women, with the hero a more or less helpful onlooker.

Well into its third act, there’s a scene where Jacques bursts through a window to assail his enemies, only to allow one to step around him, pluck a conveniently placed brick from the floor, and sock him unconscious from behind. It’s not even a fight sequence. It may very well be the least superheroic superhero movie ever made, if considered as one. “There isn’t really any humanity in Judex,” Franju told Cahiers du cinéma, “and where there’s no humanity, there’s no drama.” Judex completely lacks the strong, dominant personality and presence that allows The Shadow to always stand out no matter what story he’s in. Judex has little to him, once you get past the backstory, the black hat and cape and the mysterious trappings of his resources. And that’s kind of the point. Judex is an anti-hero in the most classical sense, because being Judex sucks, Jacques has little life outside of it, and he doesn’t like it. He never asked for any of this.

The Judex films have an interesting relationship with the usual tropes of adventure serials, paced and edited and presented differently than what we tend to think nowadays regarding serials. The action is often brisk, too fast-paced or ignored, and every death in both Judex films is anti-heroic, and deeply sad. Feuillade lingers on the pleading eyes of a man shot down after a car chase, where as Franju lingers on the isolation and vacant space of Jacqueline’s lair after she gives away her fortune, as she wanders around, orphaned. On both films, when Diana Monti, the real most dangerous villain of Judex and a character that steals the show in both appearences, meets her end, both scenes are played for great tragedy.

The Judex serial is an adventure that’s all about being nice and reforming. Locations are heavily bucolic and set in either large, lavish manors, or an idyllic countryside, setting the work apart from the urban simmer of earlier serials, and implicitly celebrating a simpler way of life. It was a wartime release that doesn't admit a war is even happening.

Judex has an odd vulnerability to him. He is often crippled by self-doubt. He is assisted by his brother and mother. He takes enormous risks to effect reconciliation between a father and a wayward son. After the kidnapping of Favraux, he never attacks thugs or the like, only using lethal force for self-defense. His hatred toward Favraux is softened by his love for Jacqueline and her love for her father, and at some point, when his faith in his mission of revenge fades, the very first thing he does is travel to the family estate in full costume and ask his mother permission to call off the vengeance.

In fact, Judex is a lot more family drama than it is an adventure serial. Almost every character in Judex, with the exception of Diana Monti, either nurtures their family bonds, or creates them if they do not have them already. The capers and chases are there aplenty, but the real focus is on relationships, love, hate and everything in between. As Brian Hibbs puts it in his Judex review:

Put simply, with Judex, the superhero is not a dream of protection in which the madness of modern living springs out with might and fury to save us from our fellow humans. Rather, the superhero is anarchy's domestication, a fantasy of the madness itself calming into the status quo and realizing virtue.

Anarchy that wouldn't piss the police off. A Fantômas you could take home to grandma. And even better - over the course of his adventure he'd learn compassion, fall in love with a sweet girl, and insert himself smoothly into clean bourgeoisie living.

Could it be the ultimate wartime fantasy?

In that light, the 1963 film not only acknowledges the denial of war in the original serial and it’s idiosyncrasies, but turns the subtext into the text. Franju’s Judex condenses the serial, strips it of logic and plot, and in the process fragments it into what was popular about it, the imagery. Franju’s Judex is set in a similar blend of documentary and dream as Eyes Without a Face, a black and white series of stills capturing a time that does not exist outside of what you’re seeing right now. I’ll paste here segments from Geoffrey O’Brien’s review:

We’ve been here before—we’ve seen this idyllic park, this dark carriage, this belle epoque ballroom, this drawer full of secret documents, this mask, this dagger, this false telegram, this ruined château; we’ve already lived through, or dreamt through, these robberies and midnight exhumations.

Where Feuillade moves at a relaxed trot, casting an eye over the passing landscape and savoring comic and sentimental interludes along the way, Franju extracts the imagistic essence of every plot turn, so that his movie seems all high points, every shot climactic, with no downtime whatsoever. The sense of time is precisely what gets suspended in Franju’s Judex.

It has always seemed to me a movie out of time, a movie made despite time. It is neither of 1916 nor 1963, and while we are watching it, we seem to be living in an alternate dream time not measurable by the clock. Incident moves rapidly on incident, yet the whole film feels caught in a peculiar immobility, as if we were allowed to indulge the fantasy of moving at will between past and present or freezing a cherished moment forever.

Franju had no wish to condescend to the material he was working with. He was perfectly happy to jettison the dross of outmoded sentiments and moral justifications in order to preserve, as in a fantastically concentrated tincture, what remained of ultimate value in Feuillade: “The dreamlike quality of the spectacle, the poetic logic of the spectacle.”

It is a cinematic paradise, evoking a world that at that very moment was being irrevocably swept away. For Franju, it was linked, as he acknowledged, to his memories of childhood. He was four years old when Feuillade’s film came out, right in the middle of the Great War, of which he was at that age blissfully unaware.

Judex’s melodramatic crises are framed—casually by Feuillade, and with fervent and fetishistic devotion by Franju—by the design and texture of clothes, furnishings, hallways, gardens, the accoutrements of a world apparently stable. But this was a paradise already lost in the moment of its inception, and it is not so much a question of bringing it back to life as of creating it again, through the alternate reality of cinema.

The tale is done, the heroine is rescued, the lovers stroll along a misty beach: a happy ending out of an old movie. At this point, Franju superimposes a title—just as, at various junctures in the film, he has interpolated intertitles in the manner of the original serial—and at just this last moment injects a startling emotional shock: “In homage to Louis Feuillade, in memory of a time that was not happy: 1914.” It is the year that is made to stand out in boldface, the fatal date that, merely by being evoked, places everything we have just experienced in a different light. A hidden grief is allowed to escape, and the fragility of the pleasures we have been savoring is made even more achingly apparent.

Judex’s primary adventures never continued after the war. The end of Judex is him finding happiness and putting the costume to rest, as he walks off with his love. The serials made in 1917-18 took place in 1913. The two remakes, one in the 30s and the Franju one in the 60s, were remakes of the first story. The Judex adventures of the 40s were Shadow stories with a name change. The last time the character has showed up in any capacit in original stories was in Tales of The Shadowmen, in stories that largely just paint him as The Shadow, but French and far more tame in personality.

It’s an interesting coincidence that the timeline of Judex (the first two serials taking place in 1913) seems to end near exactly where that of The Shadow begins (1912, when Kent Allard first goes to Europe), and in locations close to each other.

Perhaps the question isn’t so much “who” is Judex, as it’s “where” is Judex. Where did he go? What place is left for him?

One could easily imagine Jacques de Tremeuse running into Kent Allard in France, maybe passing a few lessons to someone far more driven and comfortable with violence, with far less self-doubt and a mission that extends far beyond the bourgeous landscape.

That is, assuming Jacques made it past the Great War, since there are no adventures for him beyond it. As a public domain character, you could very well write a story right now where Judex shows up anywhere, doing anything, but there is no place for Judex beyond the French countryside and the black and white manors he skulks around in. There may be no place for Judex in the world of costumed avengers that is occupied by his descendants. Nobody is clamoring for Judex to return, and Judex himself has no business left to take care of.

Time has trapped Judex in place, and yet he exists outside of it. Perhaps that’s where he finally found peace, along with Jacqueline and all the other players that starred in his adventures. In dreams only captured through celluloid. Peace may be all he ever asked for.

Maybe he waits for the day his other “brother” may find peace of his own.

#judex #jacques de tremeuse #the shadow #the shadow essays #georges franju #louis feuillade

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