Louis Feuillade: A Sampling of a Master
February 6–October 2005

Louis Feuillade (1874–1925), a French filmmaker who wrote and directed approximately 800 shorts, features, and serials in his eighteen-year career, was a pioneer of narrative film. Together with his contemporary in America, D.W. Griffith, Feuillade developed a language for the modern art of the moving image. Feuillade’s cinema transcended the conventions of the proscenium stage; he exchanged theatrical artifice for both realism and the freedom of open-air shooting. As a journalist, he recognized cinema’s potential for storytelling and reportage. In 1905, he met Alice Guy, head of production at Gaumont. Within a year, he became Gaumont’s principal director. In addition to short social dramas, chase films, comedies, and popular series with the precocious child characters Bébé and Bout de Zan, he made mysteries that later evolved into fantastic serials like Fantômas (1913), Les Vampires (1915), Judex (1917), and Tih Minh (1919); shot on locations throughout France, they thrilled the Surrealists with their sense of menace and embrace of modern technology. The exhibition opens in February with four programs of shorts and feature films, and continues through June with four serials, shown one per month.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media. All films restored by the Gaumont Pathé Archives in collaboration with either the Cinémathèque Française or the Archives Françaises du Film du CNC.

Thanks to Martine Offroy, President, and Agnès Bertola, Curator, Gaumont Pathé Archives.

Seven comedies written and directed by Louis Feuillade
Le Thé chez le concierge (Tea-time with the Super). 1907. 6 min.
Les Bous Bous Mie. 1909. 7 min.
Le Miroir magique (The Magic Mirror). 1909. 4 min.
Bébé apache (Baby, Apache Dancer). 1910. With Clément Mary. 10 min.
Bébé joue au cinéma (Baby Makes a Film). 1911. With Clément Mary. 11 min.
Bout de Zan au bal masqué (Bout de Zan Goes to a Masked Ball). 1913. With René Poyen, Marguerite Lavigne. 11 min.
Bout de Zan vole un éléphant (Bout de Zan Steals an Elephant). 1913. With René Poyen. 8 min.
Program silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Program approx. 66 min.
Sunday, February 6, 2:30; Thursday, February 16, 8:30. T2

Four melodramas written and directed by Louis Feuillade
Le Trust, ou Les Batailles de l’argent (The Trust, or Money Battles). 1911. With René Navarre, Renée Carl. 25 min.
Le Nain (The Dwarf). 1912. With Dwarf Delphin, Renée Carl. 14 min.
La Course aux millions (The Race for Millions). 1912. With Maurice Luguet, Nelly Palmer, René Navarre. 31 min.
Le Coffret de Toledo (The Toledo Chest). 1914. With René Navarre, Renée Carl, Edmond Bréon. 30 min.
Program silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Program approx. 100 min.
Sunday, February 6, 4:30; Thursday, February 10, 8:15. T2

Three short films written and directed by Louis Feuillade

Erreur Tragique. (Tragic Mistake). 1912. With René Navarre, Suzanne Grandais. While visiting a cinema a Marquis happens to see in a film his wife photographed by accident. She is with a young man, and the Marquis becomes very jealous.

LA Maison des Lions. (The House of Lions). 1912. With Renée Carl, Paul Manson. During a society party lions escape from a private menagerie. The lions were real and Feuillade's actors were not amused.

Seraphin Ou Les Jambes Nues. (Seraphin, or Bare Legs). 1921. With Georges Biscot, Edouard Mathé, Blanche Montel. From the "Belle Humeur" series. Séraphin, a proper and respectable accountant, looses his pants in public.

Program silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. Program approx. 70 mins.

Wednesday, February 9, 6:00; Sunday, February 13, 2:00. T2

Pierrot Pierrette. 1923. France. Written and directed by Louis Feuillade. With René Poyen, Little Bouboule, Amédée Charpentier. Feuillade’s penultimate feature follows an orphan boy and girl who support their sick grandfather by singing in the streets. When their grandfather is hospitalized, the children must accept charity that proves ungenerous. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Approx. 70 min.
Wednesday, February 9, 8:00; Sunday, February 13, 4:30. T1

Fantômas. 1913–14. France. Directed by Louis Feuillade. Screenplay by Feuillade, based on the novels of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. With René Navarre, Edmond Bréon, Renée Carl. Making his debut in a novel published in 1911, Souvestre and Allain’s arch criminal Fantômas combined wits and modern technology to subvert civil order and property all over France. Always eluding his nemesis, Inspector Juve, under cover of anonymity, Fantômas became so beloved that Souvestre and Allain published thirty-one further adventures. Feuillade filmed five of these for Gaumont between 1913 and 1914: Fantômas (Under the Shadow of the Guillotine), Juve vs. Fantômas ( Juve Against Fantomas), Le Mort qui tue, Fantômas contre Fantômas (Fantomas Against Fantomas), in which Juve is taken for Fantômas, and Le Faux Magistrat, which finds Fantômas in Belgium serving a life sentence that turns out to be brief. Taken as a whole, Fantômas resembles five separate feature films rather than the continuous narrative typical of Feuillade’s serials. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles; simultaneous English translation. Beta sp digital projection. Shown in its entirety on March 19, and again on March 20. Approx. five and a half hours, plus two fifteen-minute intermissions.

Saturday, March 19, 2:00; Sunday, March 20, 2:00. T2

Les Vampires. 1915–16. France. Written and directed by Louis Feuillade. With Jean Ayme, Edouard Mathé, Musidora, Marcel Lévesque. Certainly the most celebrated of Feuillade’s Gaumont serials, Les Vampires, made in ten episodes, tells of a dastardly gang of thieves, “The Vampires,” that threatens the material wealth of Paris’s upper-bourgeois society with breathtaking acts of criminal bravado. Headed by a master schemer, and abetted by a lithe woman in black, Irma Vep, The Vampires are as irresistible to contemporary audiences as to those of ninety years ago. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation.

Shown in its entirety on Sunday, April 17, 2:00 (approx. 6 hrs., 40 min. plus two intermissions); Episodes 1–5 shown on Monday, April 25, 6:00 (approx. 2 hrs., 40 min., plus one intermission); Episodes 6–10 shown on Wednesday, April 27, 6:00 (approx. 4 hrs., plus one intermission). T2

Tih Minh. 1919. France. Written and directed by Louis Feuillade. With Mary Harald, René Creste. The “Vampires” avenge the death of Irma Vep by kidnapping the “maiden” ward of an explorer whose life she saved in Indo-China and with whom she now lives on the French Riviera. Having grown emboldened since their last series of adventures, the Vampires sport a new motto (“God Strike England”) with which to destroy bourgeois values and achieve world domination. Feuillade’s twelve-part serial is a dreamy masterwork in which vials of forgetfulness, asylums where no one is insane, rooftop chases, and secret writings conspire to keep viewers engrossed and on edge. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman.

Part 1: Wednesday, May 4, 6:15 (approx. 195 min.); Part 2: Thursday, May 5, 6:15 (approx. 180 min.); shown in its entirety: Saturday, May 7, 1:00 (approx. 420 min., plus one intermission). T2

Judex (The Hand of Vengeance). 1917. France. Directed by Louis Feuillade. Screenplay by Andre Bernede, Feuillade. With René Creste, Yvette Andreyor, Musidora. Answering critics’ allegations that he glorified the criminal class in his adventure serials Fantômas and Les Vampires, Feuillade created a cloaked avenger, Judex, who rights the horrible deeds perpetrated by the banker Favraux and his mistress-in-crime, Marie (aka Diana). Fast-paced, fantastical, and thoroughly modern, Judex celebrates paranoia, a persistent theme of the past century. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman.

Episodes 1–5: Thursday, September 15, 6:15 (approx. 3 hrs.); Episodes 6–11: Friday, September 16, 6:15 (approx. 3 hrs.); shown in its entirety on Saturday, September 17, 1:30 (approx. 6 hrs. plus one intermission). T2

Barrabas. 1919. France. Directed by Louis Feuillade. Screenplay by Feuillade, Maurice Level. With Blanche Montel, Violette Jyl, Jeanne Rollette. Barrabas is the code name of the dictatorial mastermind behind a well-organized global crime syndicate that disposes of its enemies in a "health clinic." Richard Roud wrote, "Feuillade attains the tragic summits of modern realism in this work, and it even goes beyond Les Vampires in its plastic perfection." Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation.

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