Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 8

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 7

This is Part Seven of Les Vampires--entitled Satanas.  For the Wikipedia entry on the series, click here

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 6

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 5

Here is part 5 of the 10 episodes of Les Vampires:

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 4

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 3

Just a bit about director Louis Feuillade

Born in 1873, during his lifetime, Feuillade would go on to direct a whopping 700 films!  He actually wrote 800 screenplays in his lifetime as well.  His film career started Le Maison Gaumont in 1905.  He starting directing films for them in 1906, starting with Un coup de vent under artistic production director Alice Guy (who was the first woman in world ever to direct a film).  He directed or produced 9 short films that year. In 1907, after Mll. Guy left the company,  he was promoted to artistic director in charge of production, her old job.  It was from this position that he film making career really took off.

Though all early filmmakers started out making shorts, even long after solid narrative scripts of stories entered the picture, there are a few that quickly progressed on to something more.  In the United States, D. W. Griffith was constantly trying to find was to lengthen his films in one sitting.  He had experimented with movies in parts, but it was a format that didn't suit him.  So his work pioneering lenght of film is well documented and well regarded, he is the the father of the feature.  Louis Feuillade also deserves credit for the advancement of the length of a filmed story; but his approach was in pioneering and promoting serials.  By 1910 his serials were well established, by 1913 Gaumont began to produce feature length films and along came his Fantomas series.  It remains his most successful series after Les Vampires to this day.  

Still from Fantomas

Fueillade was above all a director who loved to tell a story, and resisted later efforts, especially in France, and especially after World War I, in intellectualized film to a point that most of the narrative was pushed back out.  Famed director in his own right, René Clair, who started out as Fueillade's assistant said of his days working on serials with him "very often we started a film in 12 episodes without knowing how we would finish it."  Feuillade himself later commented 1920, "A film is not a sermon or a conference, even less a rebus, but a means to entertain the eyes and spirit."  He was known to be quite a humble man, the son of wine makers, he appreciate the wider audience, and didn't at all cotton to the new notions that intellectualizing cinema to draw a more cultivated audience was anything laudable.  He continued his statement, "The quality of the entertainment is measured by the interest of the crowd form whom it was created."  Well merely 5 years before his Les Vampires did just that.  Here's part 3.

Note:  quotes taken from liner notes,  in essay written by Fabrice Zagury.

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 2

Les Vampires (1915-1916) Part 1

Dating from 1915 this actually a serial that ran into 1916.  It's what people used to do LONG  before there was television.  By the mid 1910's these really were a dime a dozen; so much so that many were simply discarded.  This French production was actually rescued from complete destruction from a trash heap by the side of the road.  

The most famous still from the film:  The Vamp Irma  Vep

It was original broken into 10 films and now the restored to disc addition by Image Entertainment runs a w'/hopping 7 hours!  I've only ever screened it through all the way once--in fact, it was a couple of Halloween seasons ago, during a crime theme as part the countdown to Halloween.  It was one epic viewing!!  

It was part of a day of crime, and not vampires, because it is a crime serial.  Yes it is laced with supernatural elements in some places, but they are subtle.  It is also a kind of vaguely super-human sort of vision of occulted crime syndicates--organized crime.  For the longest time, secret crime organizations were denied not just in Italy and the US, but in other countries as well, and France was no exception.  And this was no ordinary crime syndicate--as it is run by a woman who is called Irma Vep, whose very name is a reworking of the word "vampire."  When the serial first debuted, it was, in fact banned by the Paris police.  But the "damage" had been done.  The serial had created the character of "The Vamp"--evil women with dark hair that were always out for something that was most definitely not theirs!

Here is a Halloween special, part 1 of Les Vampires, entitled "The Severed Head."

Today's Film: An Excursion To The Moon (1908)

While I am still having Internet troubles here, with serious run around's with the cable company over services call, it has at least stabilized enough to get some extra stuff finished.  And I found my source material on the restoration of this little film.

This is a famous early remake, in fact, it is almost a frame for from remake of the famous Meliese "trick" film of 1902 (in English) A Trip To The Moon.  Though this was produced by the famous French film company Pathe Freres, it was actually directed by one of Spain's earliest film directors, Segundo de Chomon.  Though the remake is almost frame for frame, this version is richly hand stenciled--the stencil in the preserved copy of the film is the original stencilling done by Pathe.

This film is part of the Lobster Film  collection.  And is part of a collection of important early films put out on DVD by Flicker Alley LLC entitled Saved from the Flames:  54 Rare and Restored Films 1896-1944.  Music by Frederick Hodges.

HAPPY EARLY HALLOWEEN!

Hello!  Welcome to the first day of the countdown to the great pumpkin here in "Silent Room."  I love silent horror and science fiction films, and have a real fascination with the technology of the earliest cinema.  Which why I decided to create a blog to occasionally explore these topics.

I am intending to post on one film a day that counts as "fright" of some sort.  A lot of the earliest films can either be embedded directly or can be viewed on valuable website like the Internet Archive through a link.  So, I am looking to provide as many of these as possible this month.

I'm pleased to say that this blog has been included this year over at the Countdown To Halloween.  Two of my other blogs have been included as well.  New World Food is my Native American food spot, and that will include harvest recipes and ingredients all month long--featuring a different native American ingredient each day.  Scare Me On Fridays is my regular blog spot, for the countdown month, what we call "Fright Month" at my house, every day in October in treated as a Friday Night Fright.

I hope everyone has a great month and enjoys reading all the great blogs over at the Countdown!  Happy Early Halloween!