This is really a cause for celebration. This duo of much-acclaimed cult movies by the legendary Georges Franju, director of the beautiful (and horrific) masterpiece Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face – who was also the co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française – have been immensely elusive, and aficionados have spent years trying to track them down (a recent French issue of both films -- unsubtitled – had British and American Franju admirers testing their French). Georges Franju – undoubtedly one of the greatest directors of modern cinema -- is shamefully neglected today, even in his native France; hopefully this welcome issue will inaugurate a long-overdue renaissance. And now we have exquisite new transfers of both films, available here in their original aspect ratio; and it goes without saying that this is their first appearance on video in the UK.
Judex was little regarded at the time of its release in France in 1963. As poetic and dreamlike as Les Yeux Sans Visage, Judex is in the nature of a remake of Louis Feuillade's surrealistic 1916 serial, and Franju’s comic-strip style film is redolent of Cocteau and Dalí in its bizarre and hypnotic appeal. The film stars the American magician Channing Pollock, the beautiful Edith Scob (so memorable in her porcelain mask in Les Yeux Sans Visage), and Francine Bergé; Judex’s plot involves a venal banker, his troubled daughter, and a dark, perhaps Batman-style cowled man of mystery. It’s a disturbing and mesmerising fable. Nuits Rouges/Red Nights was released in the UK as Shadowman, and was the second of Franju’s homages to the films of Feuillade. Delirious pulp energy once again informs the visual poetry. Interestingly, both films offer a taster of the genre that has now virtually become the dominant genre in popular cinema: the superhero movie. With the latest Batman cinematic incarnation, The Dark Knight, easily the most eagerly-awaited movie of the 2008 summer, what makes Franju’s movies so prescient is their readiness to treat the masquerade aspect of the genre with a seriousness that doesn’t, however, preclude playfulness, and the whole issue of masks and identity is here treated in a rich and non-camp fashion. Extras include a 40-page booklet with new translations of interviews with Franju, and the stunning new transfers turn out to have been well worth the wait.
A pairing of films from the great French director Georges Franju: Judex and Nuits Rouges.
The magical, rarely seen Judex was largely unappreciated at the time of its release in 1963. This lyrical and dreamlike picture, a putative "remake" of Louis Feuillade's own 1916 Judex, is as evocative of the silent master's own works as it is the later films of Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí. A French reviewer wrote in 1963: "The whole of Judex reminds us that film is a privileged medium for the expression of poetic magic".
Starring the magician Channing Pollock, the divine Edith Scob, and the mesmerising Francine Bergé, Judex concerns a wicked banker, his helpless daughter, and a mysterious avenger. It plays like a fairy tale - one in which Franju creates a dazzling clash between good and evil, eschewing interest in the psychological aspects of his characters for unexplained twists and turns in the action. The beautifully controlled imagery, superbly rendered by Marcel Fradetal's black-against-white photography, animates a natural world and the spirits of animals all at war with a host of diabolical forces.
Franju's Judex and Nuits rouges both paid overt homage to the surreal, silent serial-works of Feuillade. Scripted in collaboration with Feuillade's grandson, Jacques Champreux, these films evince the same poetic magic that made the art of that earlier master a cause célèbre not only for the Surrealist movement, but also for the world-renowned Cinémathèque Française. It was the Cinémathèque (co-founded by the legendary Henri Langlois with Franju) that helped resurrect the reputation of Feuillade decades after he'd slipped out of the public consciousness.
Nuits rouges [Red Nights] - released in the UK as Shadowman - was the second Franju-Champreux meditation upon the films of Feuillade. It aggressively escalates a pulp atmosphere steeped in shocking turns of events to an even more vertiginous level. Here, the object of pursuit is the fabled treasure of the mythical order of the Knights Templar - which the filmmakers use as the jump-off point for staging a series of fantastic set-pieces. As the Fantômas-esque arch-criminal (known only as "The Man Without a Face", played by Jacques Champreux himself) violently pursues the treasure, the action intensifies amongst a cadre of post-'68 bohemians, the Paris police bureau, and a cult of cowled conspirators.
Vampyr (Masters of Cinema)
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Judex / Nuits Rouges (Masters of Cinema)
