September 17, 2020
Les Vampires –
France, 1915 – 1916
It is true what they say about the best laid plans. What
started out as a one-week project, watching Louis Feuillade’s influential
ten-part series Les Vampires, took
twice as long. Such things happen when you have a young child who decides at
ten o’clock at night that what she really wants to do is get up and play “Dinosaur
Stomp” five more times on the piano. Now, there are some that would insist that
a good movie will always invigorate its audience. To those who harbor such
notions, I can only say that I wish that were so. Alas, heavy, exhausted eyes
close whether you’re viewing a masterpiece or a piece of throwaway fluff – the
difference is that is easier to justify forcing them back open when it’s the
former, which thankfully Feuillade’s ambitious work is.
In Les Vampires,
France is under siege by a sinister group of criminals known as The Vampires, a
moniker it likely gave itself after they took to donning dark tight spandex
outfits and using bats as their calling card. To me, their attire owed more to
ninjas than Dracula, but that’s beside the point. Hot on their trail is not the
police surprisingly but Philippe Guerande (Edouard Mathe), one of those
intrepid cinematic reporters who are somehow able to get tips and put together
clues far more effectively than the authorities. In the first episode, he
investigates the murder of the national security agent who was leading the
investigation of the Vampires and soon they come to the conclusion that he
represents their biggest threat. Suffice to say, the dire warning fail to persuade
him. Episode Two, “The Deadly Ring,” finds the Vampires escalating their war
with Guerande: After learning from newspaper reports that Guerande is engaged
to a dancer, they set their sight on her using a ring whose sharp edge has been
dipped in poison. Guerande is even captured, but in a scene repeated in numerous
spy films over the years, they elect to wait until later in the evening to kill
him. Guess what they discover upon return to finish the job.
These early episodes also introduce the series’ requisite
comic sidekick, Oscar-Cloud Mazamette (Marcel Levesque). When we first meet
him, he’s stealing documents from Guerande’s desk, yet he escaped punishment by
flashing Guerande a picture of his family while looking pitifully dopey. In
episode two, Mazamette is revealed to be a member of the Vampires, and when
asked why he whips out the same picture, to which Guerande nods empathetically
before the two of them make their escape. As Bogart would say, this is the
start of a beautiful friendship.
Throughout the series, the head of the Vampires constantly
changes, often as a result of Guerande’s aggressive tactics and Mazamette’s
dumb luck – once it’s the result of his own organization’s ineptness.
Interestingly, around the middle of the series, a rival to the Vampires, a
businessman named Juan-Jose Moreno (Fernand Herrmann), emerges, bringing with him
focused calm and a cool, vengeful streak. Unfortunately for Guerande, the enemy
of his enemy is not necessary his friend. Episode Three introduces us to Irma
Vep (Musidora), the legendary villainess whose name just happens to be an
anagram for vampire, begging the question: Which came first, the name or the
organization?
The series has its fair share of highs and lows, and the quality
varies with each episode. Irma Vep is a consistently interesting character, and
Musidora plays her as a woman whose eyes shoot proverbial daggers at whomever comes
between her and the completion of her mission. Her use of costumes and
disguises made me think she would have fit in perfectly with the Syndicate. Feuillade
wisely includes numerous close-ups of Musidora, each of which reinforce her icy
viciousness and utter indifference to the suffering the Vampire’s crimes cause.
It’s quite a performance.
Matching her, but in a completely different way, is
Levesque, whose performance can perhaps best be appreciated by those with
experience with the acting techniques employed during the early days of silent
films. For example, Levesque has a habit of breaking the fourth wall by
treating the camera as if it were a character witnessing the action. In one
scene, he sees a character walking in a hypnotic trance and instead of
following her, he looks at the camera, indicates his shock and confusion,
points in the sleepwalker’s direction and then imitates her walk, just in case
we didn’t understand what was going on. In another scene, while he is spying on
a few nefarious characters, he turns around and wonders aloud what is going on,
despite the fact that he is alone. Still, with the mannerisms of a comic great
and an uncanny ability to convey emotions with his whole body, he is
consistently the most interesting person on screen, much more so than Guerande,
whom Mathe often plays too blandly and with far less energy – until the final
episode at least. He can’t even be bothered to react emotionally to his fiancé’s
murder.
Modern viewers will be familiar with all of the idiot
moments that often accompany films in this genre – the let’s not kill him right away speeches, the inept lower-rung of
criminals, the villain’s inevitable escape, and the organization’s peculiar
habit of committing crimes in public view sans their customary criminal attire.
I mean, what’s the point of having a disguise if you never wear it? And while
I’m pointing out inconsistencies, what was with the head of the Vampires
declaring that there was a spy in the organization, but never trying to root
him out? But I digress.
Admittedly, it can be hard to judge works of the past
adequately because they are viewed with an awareness of everything that came
after them, and things that were novel to audiences upon a film’s initial
release can seem routine and conventional now. They can also seem ludicrous,
and sadly this is how I felt whenever Guerande and Mazamette were shown leading
the police to the scene of the crime. Was there ever a time when authorities
would allow two civilians to be directly involved in a deadly operation or be
an active part in an interrogation?
The series starts slow, but hits its stride in its middle
chapters. The quality tapers off slightly toward the end due to the
introduction of a less than compelling villain – wait until you see his dancing
in the last episode – but it ends on an exciting crowd-pleasing high note, one
that allows each of our heroes a moment to shine and our lead villain the kind
of exit that most actresses dream of having.
I sometimes wonder whether some movies proclaimed to be
masterpieces are bequeathed that moniker as a result of their influence rather
than their quality, and if someone were to call Les Vampires a masterpiece, I would present a counterargument. However, for
all its absurdities and occasionally corny moments, Les Vampires deserves its reputation as a series of both
significance and quality. Feuillade weaves a tale that is consistently
involving, and he creates a visually stunning, stylish world, one which later
directors would strive to emulate in the heyday of film noir. As David Thompson
has said, The Vampires deserves to be
talked about much more than it is. (on DVD and Blu-ray)
4 stars
*Les Vampires is
silent with English intertitles.
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