December 17th: JUDEX (Georges Franju, 1963)

A masked avenger attempts to expose a corrupt banker but becomes mixed up in the schemes of a diabolical blackmailer and murderess.

French director Georges Franju, along with friend Henri Langlois, founded the Cinématheque Française 1936, an archive and club which showcased works from around the world to generations of movie lovers, and served as a film school to many future writers and directors.  Franju spent most of the 1950s making documentaries, eventually transitioning to fictional narratives and the shocking horror breakthrough Eyes Without A Face.

Franju was interested in paying tribute to the legacy of film pioneer Louis Feuillade, whose multi-installment silent thrillers in the 1910s inspired countless numbers of filmmakers and comic writers, not only for his portrayal of the more fantastic elements of the criminal underworld like disguise-wearing antiheroes, secret passages and hideouts, but also for his sophisticated storytelling techniques.

After failing in an attempt to remake Feuillade's Fantomas, Franju formed a collaboration with Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux for a remake of the director's Judex instead, while also incorporating elements of the preferred film as well as Feuillade's iconic Les Vampires.

For the title role they cast American conjurer Channing Pollock, who performs slight-of-hand tricks on camera during the film.  Actress Francine Bergé creates one of the most enigmatic, fascinating villains in film history, and former Franju collaborator Edith Scob returns to play the damsel in distress. Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre (Lawrence Of Arabia) wrote the score.

Franju does not attempt to update Judex for the modern world or its sensibilities, nor does he poke fun at the outlandish elements of the story, instead treating it like highly-esteemed literary material.  His lyrical staging of scenes creates a dream-like atmosphere, with his restrained direction keeping it from the brink of more overt surrealism.

The film received mostly positive reviews at home and abroad, but came out near the beginning of the French New Wave, where it appeared out-of-step with the bolder formal experiments of those directors.  Judex is now considered a major work from a distinct director of fantasy.

Running time is approx. 100 minutes.