Strong ideas, weak execution, and a bad ending

Fantomas vs. Fantomas (1914)
Starring: René Navarre, Georges Melchior, Renée Carl, Edmund Breon, and Laurnt Morleas
Director: Louis Feuillade

Rating: Five of Ten Stars

With Inspector Juve (Breon) imprisoned to pacify the public who as become convinced he is the criminal mastermind Fantomas, the real Fantomas (Navarre) works to turn Paris' muggers and petty criminals into his minions and revenue stream... even while launching a scheme to monitor and manipulate police activity from the inside and to assist him in an even more nefarious plot!

"Fantomas vs. Fantomas" is the fourth film in the original silent movie adaptations of the, at the time, hugely popular series of novels revolving around the mysterious criminal mastermind Fantomas and his dogged pursuers Inspector Juve and crusading reporter Fandor… and it's a bit of a mess.

Like the previous film in the series, "The Murderous Corpse", this one has Fantomas and his foes matching wits over several over-lapping schemes, some of which are clever, but all of which end up in a big tangle that blow up into a big mess due to a mix of Fantomas' arrogance and psychopathy.

Like "The Murderous Corpse", this "Fantomas vs. Fantomas" is crammed with great story ideas, but none are executed to the fullest extent of their promise and each might have been better served as the basis for their own film, or at least given more space to develop. Juve's unjust imprisonment and Fantomas' efforts to frame him even harder provide a couple of interesting plot-points, especially since twists linked to it ends up ruining every one of Fantomas' schemes in the film. However, for long stretches of the film, Juve is completely forgotten, because so many other things have to be set up.

The same is true of Fantomas' effort to control and exploit the petty street criminals and muggers of Paris--which starts as a chance encounter when a robbery endangers one of his many false identities. As with Juve's imprisonment and Fantomas' trying to take advantage of it, this endeavor ends up not coming off as the mastermind had hoped. In this case, the failure is linked entirely to Fantomas's greed and arrogance; but it's a storyline that drops from the film for its entire middle section, with a couple of oblique, nonsensical tie-ins with Fantomas' main scheme for this film.

And this main scheme is really where the entire film should have been focused (with perhaps Juve's imprisonment or Fantomas' dealings with the street gangs serving as a subplot). Here, Fantomas is endeavoring to defraud the wealthy and powerful of France by encouraging them to contribute to a bounty fund and then faking his own capture at the hands of an American detective who is actually one of Fantomas himself in one of his many fake identities. One of the best part of the film revolves around the fund-raising ball that Fantomas forces his high society accomplice Lady Beltham (Renee Carl) to host, and which he himself attends--"disguised" as Fantomas. Also attending, and also wearing Fantomas costumes, is crusading reporter Fandor (Georges Melchior) and an undercover police officer. Both Fandor and police assumed that the arrogant Fantamas wouldn't pass up the chance to attend the ball, and that he would become enraged at the sight of someone daring to impersonate him... and they assumed correctly.

 Ultimately, the actions Fantomas takes at the charity ball end up undoing all of his schemes in this film. It was a great idea, and the dominos that fall are all cleverly lined up... but the great idea is clumsily executed and almost ruined by some truly stupid plot conveniences, one of which feels like the writers just said, "Well, we're out of space and time, so let's just do this truly dumb, utterly nonsensical thing to let Fantomas escape to menace the heroes another day!"

Truly, the final seconds of "Fantomas vs. Fantomas" are among the dumbest thing I've ever seen in an film that was supposed to be taken seriously. If this had been a comedy, it would have been perfect; here, it just comes across as lazy, moronic, and startling for all the wrong reasons. It almost ruins the entire film. (On the upside, it all but made me forget about how confusing I find the relationship between Lady Beltham and Fantomas, a point I've mentioned in two previous reviews of this series and which continues in this one.)

Perhaps in 1914 this jumble of great ideas and plot threads that culminate in pure idiocy made more sense; it's based on a novel (maybe more than one?) that viewers were almost certainly familiar with and the writers and director may have left things out because he knew this. To 21st century viewers, the result is a bit lacking, and it feels like a major drop in quality from the first "Fantomas" film and a plunge from the high point of "Juve vs. Fantomas".

 

One final note: I saw another reviewer comment that "Fantomas vs. Fantomas" is a favorite among fans of this series? How? Why? What am I missing? Feel free to enlighten by leaving a comment if you feel so inclined!