Fantômas vs. Fantômas (1914)

Fantômas vs. Fantômas (1914), directed by Louis Feuillard, 3 stars

This fourth installment in Louis Feuillard’s series of Fantômas films is based on the novel, "The Thug Policeman." Like its predecessors, the source material comes from the combined pens of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, who jointly authored more than 30 books featuring the exploits of Fantômas between 1911 and 1913. 

The film begins with a bang.  Poor Juve, consistently unable to bring his nemesis to justice, is accused by the press of incompetence.  The police follow up this accusation with one of their own.  They attribute his lackluster performance--Juve's inability to capture Fantômas--to the fact that he is Fantômas.  Although they produce no evidence on which to base this claim, they lock him up just the same.  And not just anywhere.  They send him to the same jail where Fantômas was imprisoned in the first episode.  He's also in the  same cell where the unlucky painter, Jacques Dollon, was strangled by a prison guard.  (It’s either that or else Feuillard’s film schedule and meager budget forced him to reuse the same prison set.)

With Juve out of the picture, you might think that Fantômas could proceed on a crime spree pretty much unfettered, and you’d be mostly right. Juve’s hapless sidekick Fandor isn’t quite up to the task of taking on Fantômas alone, much less bringing him to justice and proving Juve’s innocence.  However, he does become suspicious of an American detective, Tom Bob, who turns out to be Fantômas’ in disguise.  Fandor watches through a hole in the floor, and we see what he sees:  Bob removes a floorboard, places his booty in the space below, and then replaces the short, wooden plank.  Then, upon leaving the building, Bob locks the door behind him trapping Fandor inside.  Within minutes, Fantômas’ band of brigands arrive to collect their share of the loot. Fandor must find a place to hide or most surely they will kill him.

But for me, the highlight of the film is a masked ball sequence during which Fantômas arrives in his trademark black-hooded cloak and cape only to find two other guests identically attired. Per the film’s title, an altercation ensues, and a faux Fantômas, a policeman in disguise, is killed by the real killer. Fandor, the third member of the disguised trio, proves ineffectual once again and allows the real Fantômas to escape.

With this film, director Feuillard seems to have really hit his stride.  The film feels lighter in tone than its predecessors, and the vignettes, more charmingly than alarmingly baffling, now seem to flow with less effort and greater continuity from one scene to the next.

My thoughts on Feuillard’s fifth and final Fantômas film will have to wait until I get my hands on the DVD set once again.  The discs were due to the library today, and I wasn’t able to watch the final film before returning them.