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Judex
1916 Crime / Thriller
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Credits
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Director: Louis Feuillade
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Script: Arthur Bernède, Louis Feuillade
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Photo: André Glatti, Léon Klausse
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Music: Robert Israel
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Cast: René Cresté (Jacques de Tremeuse,
Judex),
Musidora (Diana Monti),
René Poyen (Le môme Réglisse),
Édouard Mathé (Roger de Tremeuse),
Gaston Michel (Pierre Kerjean),
Yvonne Dario (Comtesse de Tremeuse),
Yvette Andréyor (Jacqueline Aubry),
Juliette Clarens (Gisèle),
Jean Devalde (Robert Moralés),
Georges Flateau (Vicomte de la Rochefontaine),
Louis Leubas (Le banquier Favraux),
Marcel Lévesque (Cocantin),
Olinda Mano (Le petit Jean)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 315 min (12 episodes); B&W; silent
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Summary
When his family is ruined by the unscrupulous banker Favraux, Jacques de Tremeuse resolves
to bring him to justice. Adopting a disguise and the name Judex, he captures the
crooked banker and takes him to his secret lair. Learning of Favraux’s dishonest
ways, his daughter Jacqueline gives away his wealth when she learns of his death.
This infuriates a pair of ruthless crooks, Diana Monti and Moralés, who immediately
swear to take revenge on Jacqueline, and her protector, Judex…
Review
Director Louis Feuillade won fame and critical acclaim, in both Europe and America, with
his early crime serials, Fantômas
(1913-14) and Les
Vampires (1915). These episodic films were hugely popular, but they also
brought Feuillade a fair amount of criticism from the bourgeois establishment, who accused
him of glorifying crime and making heroes of criminals. Feuillade’s well-meaning
response to this brow-beating was another serial, the 12 part epic entitled Judex
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In Judex, the central character is not a
master criminal, but a crime-fighter with special powers, unusual technology and a penchant
for extravagant dress wear – in effect, the moving image’s first superhero.
His name is Judex, which, coincidentally, is the Latin word for “Justice”.
The actress who played the principal villain in Feuillade’s Les
Vampires – the stunning Musidora – resurfaces in this film, albeit
in a far more restrained role. The part of Judex is played by the René Cresté,
a charismatic actor who cuts an instantly recognisable profile in his wide-brimmed hat
and flowing black cape.
Judex has
less of the expressionist fantasy element of Feuillade’s earlier serials but is
still a magnificently constructed piece of cinema, and one which shows that, both artistically
and technically, Feuillade was way ahead of the game. There’s less action
than in Les Vampires, but the characters are
much more developed and believable. Far from being an infallible hero, Judex turns
out to be a much more interesting character, one whose methods for fighting crime progressively
erode his moral authority and cause us to question whether he is really as noble as he
seems.
Contrary to Feuillade’s intentions, Judex
ends up being the most anarchistic of his thriller serials. By presenting
us with a flawed hero, the film subtly undermines the notion that good will always win
out over evil, and that moral goodness is all it takes to save the day. In Judex,
it is possible to see the origins of film noir
and the film policier, genres which would leave
a very heavy imprint on French cinema. In such films, the boundaries between
good and evil are seldom well-defined, and notions of moral superiority are, if anything,
totally subverted.
The popularity of the Judex
series led Feuillade to make a sequel, which again consisted of twelve episodes,
and was entitled La Nouvelle Mission de Judex,
released in 1918. Subsequently, Judex was remade by his son-in-law Maurice
Champreux in 1934, and then by Georges Franju in 1963.
© James Travers 2005
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