Tih Minh
About Tih Minh
Jacques d'Athys (René Cresté) comes home to Nice from Indochina with Tih Minh (Mary Harald), a young woman from Laos, and with a book he does not know is in code. The book locates treasure and government secrets. A band of jewel thieves and spies, among them the marquise Dolorès, the hypnotist Kistna, and Dr. Gilson, who can wipe a victim's memory, come after the book and after Tih Minh. Athys's servant Placide (Georges Biscot) is pulled into the chase with them.
Cast & crew
More about Tih Minh
Louis Feuillade wrote and directed this 12-chapter serial for Société des Etablissements L. Gaumont. Léon Klausse photographed and edited. Gaumont released it on 30 November 1918. The running time is given as 418 minutes.
Themes
Background
Released in France on 30 November 1918, just after the Armistice, and sold in America two years later under a title that advertised the hypnotist.
Making
Feuillade made it at Gaumont in the same years as his other crime serials, with Cresté, already Judex, as the adventurer.
Reviews
Compared with American serials, its pace was called slow, and U.S. distributors did not take another European serial in that format.
Look
Léon Klausse shot and cut the 12 chapters.
Music
Silent, with French intertitles.
Notes
- Twelve chapters.
- Édouard Mathé plays Sir Francis Grey. Louis Leubas plays Kistna. Gaston Michel plays Dr. Gilson. Georgette Faraboni plays the marquise Dolorès.
- In 1920 a cut version opened in the United States as In the Clutches of the Hindu.
- American trade reaction found the European pace slow next to U.S. serials. It was the last European serial issued in the American chapter-play format.
- The story is set in Nice after an expedition in Indochina.
Scenes
- Athys returns to Nice with Tih Minh and a book whose code he has not read.
- Dr. Gilson wipes memories while the band hunts the book.
