Directed by Louis Feuillade

Position on the list (at time of viewing): 640

This is our first “film” which presents a significant hurdle to any traditional rating system. Technically a 10-part miniseries released over the course of 1915 & ’16, this monster clocks in at a grand total of seven hours and twenty minutes, and presents the additional problem of being incredibly uneven over its ten installments. In general, it deals with the exploits of a gang called Les Vampires and the efforts of authorities and journalists to discover and stop them, but it ventures rather far afield from that over its ten episodes. It’s got weird bat-themed dance numbers, many cases of mistaken identity (intentional or otherwise), psychic hypnotists, and so so so many poisonings. Like, everyone in this entire series is poisoned at some point. They get poisoned with rings, with pens, with pins, with pretty much anything that can contain poison. There’s an entire episode named “The Poisoner.” It also ends with a crazy running gun battle that is unlike anything previously filmed.

I definitely see why this miniseries is on the list–it seems to the contemporary viewer that the director must have been insane! It is clear that the rules of filmmaking hadn’t been finalized, because this movie follows very few of them. The stunts are astonishing, and were all performed by actual acrobats and daredevils, and the plot careens back and forth across basically every spy trope in existence over its significant runtime. While this craziness means that the movie is very rarely boring (which is a claim that unfortunately few Griffith films can make of their entirety), it definitely isn’t consistently amazing throughout. It definitely gets better as it goes along, with the later installments showing a *much* better understanding of pacing and tension than the earlier installments, which seem to execute a kind of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ of pacing, with long slow stretches interrupted by scenes where so much happens that you may have trouble believing it. There was also a larger burden placed upon the audience at this time period than in the present–there is no way that a viewer could kind of half-watch this and get anything out of it. It demands your full attention at all times. If you look away from this for just a couple of minutes, you could miss multiple significant plot points. This is only partially because of the film’s silent nature–it’s also just because it’s so dense at times (again, it’s weird that at other times it becomes downright sluggish). It takes some time, and you have to adjust to the movie’s own pace, but once you do it becomes a very engaging experience. 

The acting is still very much in the same mode as other movies of the era, which means very heightened performances, broad gestures, and otherwise acting as if they were on a vaudeville stage as opposed to in front of a movie camera. It will be years before that really changes, though, so I’m going to stop bringing it up until there’s a significant modification. For what it is, the acting is consistently engaging throughout. Irma Vep (Musidora [and also an anagram for VAMPIRE!]) is a particular standout, and became quite famous for the role at the time. Vamping (no pun intended) about the sets in crazy eye makeup and weird bodysuits, she captivates pretty much every moment she’s on screen. She’s a particularly fun kind of over-the-top villain (think Cate Blanchett in the recent Thor: Ragnarok) in that she makes me smile more than anything else. Particular note should also be given to the real-life acrobats and stuntmen doing all kinds of crazy chases across Parisian rooftops, which never fail to be exciting. Most of the other acting is somewhere between inoffensive and a little off to the modern viewer. 

Regardless of the many ups and downs, this is (for my money) more enjoyable than the majority of Griffith films from a modern perspective. Perhaps because of the mad, no-rules (and no money!) approach of Feuillade, this feels less dated than the majority of the (arguably more historically significant) Griffith. The thriller elements are already really well developed, and would go on to influence countless other filmmakers (especially F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang next door in Germany; evidently Bunuel also sites it as a big influence). As I said at the outset, this one is really hard to rate. I feel like at its best, it’s a 3.5 film, but at some of its lows it’s more in the 2-2.5 range. I think I’ll settle for a nice average, which I feel respects both its strengths and weaknesses. My wife actually didn’t make it through this one (stopping around the fourth episode if I recall correctly), which says to me that perhaps it’s not necessarily a great starting place for someone who isn’t really into silent or historical film.

Overall: