Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas is a landmark silent epic about the adventures of a diabolical criminal played by René Navarre. This shadowy yet elegant figure, a master of disguise, engages in an endless game of cat and mouse with a police inspector (Edmund Bréon) who can never catch him. When Kino released the five-film serial on DVD in 2010,
PopMatters
reviewed it here with analysis so insightful and informative that we can add nothing to it except our praise of the reviewer’s brilliance.
This new Blu-ray upgrade contains exactly the same program, including the critical commentary, the two excellent bonus shorts and the profile of Feuillade’s career. The only new feature is a gallery of the stylish, colorful, sometimes gory covers of the Fantomas novels in various editions. It stands to reason that people who haven’t seen the previous edition should benefit from the Blu-ray, but will those who already own the DVD derive anything in particular from this reissue?
Yes! And for one reason. This isn’t merely an upgraded transfer from 2010 but a 2013 restoration conducted by France’s Gaumont (the original production company) with 4K scanning from the original negative. The result is an image of astounding clarity and sharpness. We’d hesitate to repeat the old phrase about looking like it was shot yesterday, but it sure looks like the negative was developed yesterday. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of such careful visual attention (and the music is vivid and delightful, too) in appreciating a classic film properly.
Even viewers who don’t fall under the spell of the bizarre, sometimes surreal events and the dreamy hypnotic pace must admit that this print looks marvelous, whether in its black and white shots or its occasional tints. If you turn off the lights and give the film half a chance in its hour-length episodes, you probably will be charmed and intrigued by a vision of criminal power and moral compromise that thrilled and fascinated a world on the brink of its first world war.