Fantômas [1932]

Made in 1932, this first talkie Fantômas opens as if it were a Cat and the Canary-style old dark house spooker [to the extent of mimicking the long corridor shot from Paul Leni's silent film which was also imitated that year in James Whale's The Old Dark House], but ventures outside in its second half for more serial-style thrills. Art deco opening credits feature the Frankenstein gimmick of billing '?' as Fantômas, with an added fillip of prominently giving 'and with' billing to a big name actor [Gaston Modot, well-known as an anarchist from L'age d'or] in a seemingly disposable role and then not having him turn out to be the masked, body-stockinged master crook, disguise expert and murderer [that's Jean Galland, who gets his full credit at the end of the film].

The first act is set during a weekend party in the home of a Marquise [Marie-Laure] where everyone trembles at talk of the daring and dangerous crook. The hostess is killed by the stalker and his arch-enemy Inspector Juve [Thomy Bourdelle] shows up in such a suspicious manner that [as often happens] he is himself suspected of being Fantômas. A group of rather bland suspects is assembled, but claustrophobia dissipates when the case straggles on. Things only really come together in a thrilling motor-racing sequence in which Fantômas, posing as a man about town, discreetly tips over a can of oil with his cane to cause a pile-up as part of his campaign to kill the aristrocrat Lord Beltham [Paul Azais], whose wife [Tania Fedor] is in on the plot. Directed by the Hungarian Paul Fejos, who brings over the Hollywood touch learned while making The Last Performance and Broadway [where he was shaping up as a successor to Leni] and developing his sideline in French mystery after a Budapest-made Arsene Lupin.
KIM NEWMAN

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