Olivier Assayas's engrossing movie traces the life of one of the 20th century's most notorious terrorists
Conventional wisdom suggests that we look to America for the essential models of the crime movie, but in fact, in addition to providing a name for that most respected of Hollywood genres, the film noir, the French were way out front when, early in the last century, Louis Feuillade directed a succession of sophisticated, surreal serials of underworld activities that remain unsurpassed, among them Judex, Fantômas, Les vampires and Tih Minh.
This tradition was carried on in Marcel Carné's classics of the 1930s and after the second world war by Jacques Becker with Touchez pas au grisbi (based on a Série noire novel by Albert Simonin that was accompanied by a 14-page glossary of underworld argot) and Jean-Pierre Melville, who specialised in gangster movies of a purity unrivalled by Hollywood.
Numerous petits-maîtres...
Conventional wisdom suggests that we look to America for the essential models of the crime movie, but in fact, in addition to providing a name for that most respected of Hollywood genres, the film noir, the French were way out front when, early in the last century, Louis Feuillade directed a succession of sophisticated, surreal serials of underworld activities that remain unsurpassed, among them Judex, Fantômas, Les vampires and Tih Minh.
This tradition was carried on in Marcel Carné's classics of the 1930s and after the second world war by Jacques Becker with Touchez pas au grisbi (based on a Série noire novel by Albert Simonin that was accompanied by a 14-page glossary of underworld argot) and Jean-Pierre Melville, who specialised in gangster movies of a purity unrivalled by Hollywood.
Numerous petits-maîtres...
- 10/23/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½
Louis Feuillade worked at the great French movie studio Gaumont, making dozens upon dozens of films, of all different stripes. He made comedies, historical films, "realist" films, and even a series of films with child stars, such as "Bout de Zan." But out of his 700 or so films, his reputation rests mainly on his lengthy crime serials, including Les Vampires (1915), Judex (1916), Tih Minh (1918), and beginning with the five-and-a-half hour Fantômas (1913). These remarkable films were among the first to employ location shooting, and to use a sustained, intertwining plot that lasted for more than a couple of reels. They also perfected the use of the cliffhanger and the maintaining of suspense; D.W. Griffith had learned how to create thrills with his cross-cutting, but Feuillade slowed this down and stretched it out for a richer and deeper experience. His techniques would later be passed on to Fritz Lang,...
Rating (out of 5): ****½
Louis Feuillade worked at the great French movie studio Gaumont, making dozens upon dozens of films, of all different stripes. He made comedies, historical films, "realist" films, and even a series of films with child stars, such as "Bout de Zan." But out of his 700 or so films, his reputation rests mainly on his lengthy crime serials, including Les Vampires (1915), Judex (1916), Tih Minh (1918), and beginning with the five-and-a-half hour Fantômas (1913). These remarkable films were among the first to employ location shooting, and to use a sustained, intertwining plot that lasted for more than a couple of reels. They also perfected the use of the cliffhanger and the maintaining of suspense; D.W. Griffith had learned how to create thrills with his cross-cutting, but Feuillade slowed this down and stretched it out for a richer and deeper experience. His techniques would later be passed on to Fritz Lang,...
- 10/6/2010
- by underdog
- GreenCine
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