Back to Feuillade
dbdumonteil
Duvivier's huge body of work ,as far as the silent movies are concerned,is not well known:"Poil De Carotte" ,"Au Bonheur Des Dames " and that's it.The only…
Duvivier's huge body of work ,as far as the silent movies are concerned,is not well known:"Poil De Carotte" ,"Au Bonheur Des Dames " and that's it.The only available copy of " Le Mystere De La Tour Eiffel " is Dutch ,and ,although it's got a running time of two hours +,a big hunk is missing,considering the script which features a chamber of tortures where the hero is imprisoned notably.The story is thoroughly implausible ,worthy of Feuillade's extravaganzas in the precedent decade ;even Souvestre and Allain who wrote "Fantomas" would not write such a far-fetched plot ,absolutely impossible to tell ,and anyway my good friend Writer's Reign already wrote an adequate summary.Let's note however that that "La Compagnie De L'Antenne" in the FRench synopsis has become Ku -Klux -Eiffel (sic),which makes sense ,for these sinister persons are dressed like the maleficent American KKK;that the young boy who plays Reginald ,Jimmy Gaillard ,would become an actor when he grew up (notably in "Gringalet" or "L'Amant De Borneo" );that the fortress of Roche Noire" has a strange architecture inside and that it's got a strange window:when you try to open it,bars appear.The (Klu- Klu-Eiffels) shadow graph is a trick Duvivier would use again much later in one scene of "L'Affaire Maurizius"(1954)The best of what remains of the original work is the final scenes ,on the Eiffel Tower ,where Duvivier already showed he would be one of the greatest French directors of all time.He filmed the famous tower in a way that is almost frightening: the steel frames ,the cables ,everything creates a new world where men are like spiders on a giant web ,while the crowd looks like ants on the Champ De Mars.
Read full review
★ 10 / 10
Little chance you'll ever catch this film but, if you are so fortunate, make sure to bring the whole family!
seldom-
This incredibly funny film, considered almost lost, was furnished with a wonderful new score by Fay Lovsky in April 2005 and shown once in the Filmmuseum in…
This incredibly funny film, considered almost lost, was furnished with a wonderful new score by Fay Lovsky in April 2005 and shown once in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdamlocation of the sole remaining copy. Despite being virtually unknown, tickets sold-out that night.
Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel deserves a world tour. Even better: a Duvivier retrospective (Sounds by Lovsky!). The action is truly of a rare-seen kind.
Considering the equipment that had to be carried in those days, it is quite a marvel how advanced this thing is shot. Any available story is rendered inferior to the slapstick-packed action which includes a downhill chase by plane, vertical fighting in the iron skeleton of the Eiffel towerapparently without safety gear involved, combined with brilliant characterslater eagerly copied; e.g. George Remi, author the Tintin books.
Achillis Saturnin, making a meagre living as one half of the "Siamese twins", a ridiculous circus act, inherits a dazzling sum of 159 million francs, only to have his double steal it behind his back. The impostor installs himself in the mansion of the deceased, adjusting smoothly to an overdone servant-keeping-class kind of lifestyle.
But more rivals lie in wait; a spooky sect under the name of Ku-Klux-Eiffel, known for jamming French broadcasts with coded messages transmitted from the Eiffel tower, comically terrorize the impostor down to his nightmares. Driven to panic, the man goes into hiding in Paris, where he discovers that Achillis, Silvanie and her younger brother, have lost their job at the circus and are dependent on alms.
Afraid to return to the mansion himself, he sends Achillis to fill in his place in promise of 500.000 francs. Achillis agrees. While living it up, throwing parties and such, he is kidnapped by the Knights of Ku-Klux-Eiffel who take him to their castle high up the mountains. Taking it for a prank at first, Achillis only manages to escape at the very last moment. Along the way he gets hold of the key to the Ku-Klux-Eiffel code and one of their receiving devices. Able, thus, to intercept their messages he gains in to exposing the entire sect.
It takes another kidnap and escape through a labyrinth, the unmasking of a human chameleon, getting passed the mysterious Li-Ho-Ha (a creepy, apparently Chinese-or so adviser of the sect's leader), and the notorious Eiffel-tower-climb to bring this marvelous film to a happy end.
Read full review
6.9/10
166
•••
Excellent! Thank you so much!