The Vampires or, The Arch Criminals of Paris
About The Vampires or, The Arch Criminals of Paris
Philippe Guérande, a reporter played by Édouard Mathé, and his colleague Oscar Mazamette, played by Marcel Lévesque, spend ten episodes hunting a Paris crime gang called the Vampires. The leaders use the title Grand Vampire. Irma Vep, played by Musidora, works with them. The gang robs and kills. They are not supernatural. The episodes run from a severed head in a swamp through poison, codes, and a last wedding, and the serial ends with the gang broken.
Cast & crew
More about The Vampires or, The Arch Criminals of Paris
Louis Feuillade wrote and directed the ten episodes for Gaumont. The first, La Tête coupée, opened on 13 November 1915. The last, Les Noces sanglantes, opened on 30 June 1916. Wikipedia times the whole serial at 417 minutes. Wikidata lists 420. Manichoux is the cinematographer named on the English page. Feuillade shot it quickly, with little written script, painted flats, reused furniture, and stock footage, while Pathé was competing for the same audience and the war was taking actors. Musidora, Jean Ayme, Louis Leubas, René Poyen, Stacia Napierkowska, and Renée Carl are in the cast.
Themes
Background
The episodes opened in Paris across the middle of the First World War, from November 1915 to June 1916.
In film history
Later writing on the serial traces thriller devices in it through Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, and links the imagery to Luis Buñuel and to André Breton's circle.
Making
Feuillade made the serial just after Fantômas, on the same inexpensive Gaumont method, while wartime call-ups kept changing who was available to play in it.
Reviews
A reviewer in Hebdo-Film wrote that a man of Feuillade's talent was returning to "this unhealthy genre [the crime film], obsolete and condemned by all people of taste." Other notices of the time called the serial old-fashioned beside films such as The Birth of a Nation.
Audiences
The serial drew a large wartime audience and made Musidora a star, even though the war had cut the public that Fantômas had reached.
Look
The English filmography credits Manichoux. Feuillade used real Paris streets, flats, and reused furniture rather than large built sets.
Music
The episodes are silent. Robert Israel wrote music for the 2000 Image Entertainment edition.
Preservation
The ten episodes survive. A 4K restoration was prepared for the 2024 Eureka box, issued with Fantômas, Judex, and Tih Minh. A Wikimedia Commons file holds the Satanas episode, not the full serial.
Notes
- Irma Vep is an anagram of vampire. Musidora wears a black bodysuit in the part.
- Mazamette is Guérande's friend at the newspaper. Louis Leubas plays Satanas, one of the Grand Vampires.
- A reviewer in Hebdo-Film objected to Feuillade returning to crime pictures at all.
- Home-video editions include Image Entertainment (2000, music by Robert Israel), a Gaumont French restoration (2006), Artificial Eye in Britain (2008), Kino (2012), a Gaumont Blu-ray (2017), and a Eureka Masters of Cinema box in September 2024.
Scenes
- Guérande is sent after Inspector Durtal's body, found without its head.
- Irma Vep moves through the apartments in the black bodysuit.
Influenced by
- Fantômas
Also available
- Internet Archive (LesVampires1915DirectedByLouisFeuillade)
- Wikimedia Commons (Les Vampires - Satanas(1916).webm)
