The Murderous
Corpse (aka The Dead Man Who Killed), directed by Louis Feuillade (1913), 3 stars
This is the third film in the Fantômas series, and though I liked it, I also found it disjoint and a bit confusing. I attribute my difficulty in following some parts of the plot to the print: It was missing the requisite opening
montage featuring the characters in their various disguises. Without this foreshadowing
of information, which was provided in both previous series entries (and presumably all
of them—at least at one time), it was hard at times to figure out who was who
and, as a result, what was what.
Like its predecessors, this film is divided into fairly
distinct episodes, this time with Juve and Fandor acting separately to outwit Fantômas as
his crime spree continues to grow otherwise unabated.
Miraculously, they have both managed to escape the explosion that ended
the previous film, “Juve vs. Fantômas” (1913), though that is not immediate clear. Fandor, bandaged and
bedridden, his distraught as he reads that his colleague’s body was not recovered from the wreckage. Juve presumed dead, but if the disguise montage had been included, I
would have known immediately that this was not so. He appears in the very
next shot, but in disguise that makes him unrecognizable.
Impersonating a simple-minded tramp named, Cranajour, Juve has begun infiltrating the world of Fantômas by
hiring himself on to a
fence for stolen goods. Meanwhile, Fantômas drugs painter Jacques Dollon in his study, and when the artist awakes, he finds a baroness dead in a nearby chair. Unfortunately, things are fated to get even worse for Dollon. After being locked up for the
murder of the Baroness, he is strangled by a guard in his holding cell, vanishes, and
then reemerges as the death-dealing character from whom the film derives its
name.
A couple of things of minor note: Before being led to his doom, Dollon is
fingerprinted by the police. I’m guessing
that this was a process unfamiliar to the general public in 1913, because the
camera painstakingly records each and every finger on both hands, and this takes
quite a bit of time. But Dollon’s fingerprints do figure prominently later in the film, so it may be that the Director also took his time because wanted to
indelibly imprint this memory in the mind of the viewer in advance of the
upcoming scenes.
Another interesting moment occurs when Cranajour (alias Juve) spies a fully recovered Fandor scaling a nearby rooftop. What follows is an early use of the subjective
camera. Cranajour grabs a pair of binoculars and points them in Fandor's direction. At that point, the camera cuts back and forth between shots of Fandor in the distance, framed by a black, binocular-shaped mask, and Cranjour peering at him through the binoculars. The editing is
clearly meant to convey to the audience that we are, for a short time, observing Fandor through Cranajour’s
eyes. This type of cross-cutting is a common technique
today, but it was not in 1913. Nearly all early films were
comprised of a series of static shots with the actors moving in front (and instead) of the camera--as in the rest of this film.
Finally, one last item I found mildly amusing: Poor
Princess Danidoff, who falls victim to Fantômas
within the opening minutes of the first film, is robbed of her jewelry yet
again here. Unlike lightening, this criminal is clearly capable of striking twice.
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