Le Mystère de la tour Eiffel (1928)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

Of the 22 silent films that Julien Duvivier directed the one that says most about his extraordinary technical capabilities is Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel - and no wonder, as this is by far the most adventurous, most visually spectacular and most totally insane film he ever put his name to in his 50-year long career.  It is also his most hilarious work - an odd thing for a filmmaker who is not known for looking on the bright side of life.  Today we would call this an outlandish spoof but the film was no doubt conceived as an affectionate pastiche of the adventure serials of the previous decade - in particularly those directed by the master of the genre, Louis Feuillade.  The defining ingredients of Feuillade's episodic and highly influential thriller masterpieces - Fantômas (1914-15), Les Vampires (1915) and Judex (1916) - are brazenly lifted and worked into a deliriously loony narrative in which Paris's most famous landmark - the Eiffel Tower - takes the starring role. Once reviled as a hideous eyesore, by the 1920s La Tour Eiffel had become the French capital's proud beacon of modernity, so why shouldn't it serve as the means by which a vast criminal network communicate its nefarious exploits across the entire continent of Europe?  It's mad, chaotic and fun - Duvivier's silliest film by several kilometres.

By this (still early) stage in his career, Julien Duvivier had directed eighteen films and had garnered little commercial success, his only notable achievement being his realist drama Poil de Carotte (1925).  His fortunes were to change drastically when he began his long and fruitful association with the producers Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac, who had taken over the management of the film production company Film d'Art.  Duvivier's collaboration with this production team lasted the best part of a decade, from L'Homme à l'Hispano (1926) to Le Paquebot Tenacity (1934), and included his first major commercial success David Golder (1930).  Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel was the third film Duvivier made for Vandal and Delac, an unashamedly commercial proposition that was intended to capitalise on the burgeoning popularity of the adventure-thriller genre in cinema, whilst showcasing the comedic talents of its lead actor, the incomparable Tramel.

Although Julien Duvivier is not known as an action-thriller director, it is worth noting that he began his career working as an assistant to Louis Feillade, one of the originators of the genre.  Feuillade's influence is very noticeable on the first feature that Duvivier directed - Haceldama ou le prix du sang (1919) - which combines elements of melodrama, western and Feuilladesque thriller intrigue, albeit not very satisfactorily.  The similarity between this debut piece (which was such a commercial letdown that the director virtually disowned it) and Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel is striking in more than a few sequences - to the extent that the earlier film feels like a preparation for the later one.  One of the most interesting aspects of Haceldama is how (as in the classic American western) the location - the stunningly picturesque Corrèze region of France - becomes an essential part of the drama.  For his 1928 film, Duvivier does the same thing, making Paris, specifically its iconic Eiffel Tower, the fixed fulcrum around which the entire tangled narrative revolves at a staggering pace.

The film has three principal locations - Paris, Nice and an unspecified region in the heart of the French countryside (the location for the villains' mountain hideout).  In each case, the setting becomes an active player in the narrative, with extensive location photography (mostly taken from the vantage point of a moving vehicle) serving to fully immerse the spectator in the rapidly unfolding drama.  Paris signifies not only bustling modernity but also a sickening disparity between the experiences of the rich and penniless.  Nice is the preserve of the idle rich - its swanky hotels and pristine boulevards reeking of lucre and privilege.  The countryside appears savage and mysterious, the stark unspoiled counterpoint of the sprawling metropolitan centres that define modern civilisation and allow the most heinous of criminal organisations to grow like a malignant cancer.

With its continual emphasis on location, Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel extends the concept of the city symphony made popular by Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures (1926) and Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927).  By contrasting natural and urban landscapes with such cinematic fervour and grandeur, the film manages to awaken our sense of awe in both.  Yet, whilst the location may shift many times, the crucial setting throughout remains the Eiffel Tower - the linchpin of the story and the location for the film's unbelievably stunning climax.  René Clair's Paris qui dort (1924) - a far better known and far more highly regarded film - has been justly praised for its use of the Parisian Iron Lady, but Duvivier's film gives it a much starrier role, and this may well have influenced subsequent directors - most notably Alfred Hitchcock - to incorporate famous monuments in the spectacular denouements of their films.  It was barely a year after this film's release that Hitchcock used London's British Museum as the grand setting for the climax of his first sound film Blackmail (1930).

It is with its deft use of visual effects that Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel is most impressive.  Thanks to some skilful use of double exposure, Félicien Tramel is able to play the two leading roles in the film - the sympathetic but dim-witted hero Achille and his wicked (unnamed) double.  At the time, Tramel was a hugely popular comic actor, indeed one of the most bankable stars in French cinema (even if his acting skills were, to put it mildly, somewhat below par).  He started out as cabaret performer, finding great success as a comic singer at Paris's top night spots, including the Folies-Bergère and Casino de Paris.  His acting career got off to a phenomenal start after WWI when he triumphed in the lead role of the stage play Le Crime du Bouif, a comedy-thriller based on a popular crime novel by Georges de La Fouchardière and André Mouëzy-Éon.  Such was the play's success that it was almost immediately turned into a film of the same title, directed by Henri Pouctal  and with Tramel playing the lead.  The film was a smash hit and resulted in a succession of sequels, all starring Tramel.  The actor had a long and prolific career, showing up in Marcel Pagnol's La Fille du puisatier (1940). Yves Allégret's Les Deux timides (1941) and Georges Lampin's L'Idiot (1946), before bowing out in Raymond Lamy's Miroir (1947).

Tramel was at the height of his fame and abilities when he was tasked with unravelling the Mystery of the Eiffel Tower.  His flair for visual comedy was virtually unrivalled on the eastern side of the Atlantic and is put to good use in the film's most farcical sequences, which employ Chaplin-style slapstick and lavish visual gags to great effect.  The funniest comedy digression sees our hero pushing his way through a seemingly endless series of metal doors as he tries desperately to escape from the maze-like prison he finds himself in, within the bowels of the gangsters' Fu Manchu-like headquarters.  He ends up running as fast as he can down a stretch of corridor, surprised at why he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere until he realises the floor beneath him is moving in the opposite direction.  When Achille opens a window that promises escape his way is suddenly blocked by a portcullis - a gag that is milked to death as the mule-headed imbecile tries hopelessly to outwit the device.

Achille is such an unremittingly moronic character that you can't help loving him.  It is with an air of infantile joviality that the hapless fool reacts to his first abduction.  Achille has been led by his scheming double to think he has fallen foul of a practical joke, and so how can he resist laughing at the sight of his captors arrayed in the humorous garb of the Ku Klux Klan, complete with cone-shaped headgear and flowing robes?  Achille's reaction (the exact opposite to what we would find in a similar Feuillade set-up) compels us to see the villains in the same way, and we just can't help laughing as they become wildly discombobulated by their prisoner's odd behaviour.  As the band of hooded sadists try and fail to instil a sense of terror into their proceedings, it isn't too hard to notice a similarity with Monty Python's take on the Spanish Inquisition.  If only Achille's tormentors had had the use of a comfy chair.

Tramel's fun presence is magnificently counterpointed by the supremely smooth villainy of the principal baddy Sir William Dewitt.  A master of disguise with a power complex bigger (and deadlier) than Chernobyl, Dewitt revels in his status as the leader of the world's most notorious criminal gang - a flagrant but deliciously self-conscious synthesis of Feuillade's Fantômas and Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse.  Perfect for the part, Gaston Jacquet exudes cool, calculating malignancy throughout and is genuinely spine-chillingly evil in his stand-out confrontation with Tramel in a hotel room in Nice.  It so easy to read Dewitt's assessment of Achille in his controlled facial expressions, the indulgent look of a grown-up patiently enduring the antics of a troublesome toddler.  In this eerily sedate face-off between a naive imbecile and a monstrously venal crime lord it is clear who is going to get the upper hand, but the effortless way in which Dewitt turns the tables still comes as a shock.  Once this scene has played out, Achille is soon back on his way to the gangsters' hideout, the glib boyish smile well and truly wiped from his face.  It's Groundhog Day all over again.

The other cast member of note is Jimmy Gaillard, who makes his screen debut here at the age of 10.  Before this, he had made a name for himself from the age of seven as a dancer, and he would later go on to better things after taking a starring role in Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein's sentimental drama Peau de pêche (1929).  Gaillard's instantly lovable screen persona and physical agility made him an ideal casting choice for the part of the Gavroche-like street urchin, and in the sequence in which he busks for a living with the down-hearted Achille there is an immediate connection with Chaplin's The Kid (1921).

Through its striking visuals, fluid camerawork and rapid editing Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel manages to sustain its convoluted nonsensical plot by never allowing the spectator a moment's boredom.  Yes, the film is longer than it needs to be and overly repetitive in places (the second kidnapping suggests a floundering imagination on the part of the screenwriter), but it somehow manages to keep going, churning out suspense thrills and belt-busting laughs at an astonishing rate.  And, every so often, it throws up a bravura flourish that is guaranteed to knock you out of your seat.  The best example of this is the kooky shadow play dream sequence, in which Achille's nasty doppelganger imagines himself being threatened and tortured to death by his hooded adversaries.  As with much of the film, what should be absolutely terrifying - the bold silhouette of an over-enthusiastic KKK ensemble fiercely mutilating their victim with carpenter's tools - actually proves to be irresistibly hilarious.  And then there's the occasional (tongue-in-cheek) nod to the avant-garde.  Julien Duvivier employed superimposition in many of his early films, but rarely as mischievously as he does here.  Most striking is the sequence using rapid montage and over-laid images to show the villains at work, with fleeting clips of a singer, musicians and radio audience frenetically inter-cut with a bizarre coded message.  The images alone suggest a deafening cacophony of sound.

Impressive as these expressionistic and impressionistic touches are, they are insignificant compared with the incredible technical achievement of the film's dramatic action-packed finale.  Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel concludes with what is surely one of the most ambitious and daring action sequences of any silent film, one in which Duvivier tested the skill and resources of his camera operators to the absolute limit.  It is the kind of death-defying full-throttle action extravaganza that could only be filmed today using green screen and CGI effects, and it is a testament to the courage, commitment and ability of the stuntmen that Duvivier was able to capture these astonishing images of dozens of characters boldly negotiating a perilous course up the Tower in what can only be described as a nerve-racking tour de force.

The camerawork is no less praiseworthy, with grand sweeping pans serving to convey the full majestic size and character of the Tower whilst imbuing as much drama and suspense into the final showdown as it can take.  The entire sequence lasts just under twenty minutes and rates as possibly the most harrowing and vertiginous twenty minutes of any French silent film.  It is hard not to be awe-struck by the sheer insane ambition of Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel, even if it is a tad diminished by its crazy second-hand plot and careless surfeit of comedic excess.  It may not be one of Duvivier's best, but it holds your attention far more than most of his other silent work and is a huge amount of fun.  Even the greatest filmmakers should let their hair down from time to time.

Film Synopsis

With their 'Siamese Twins' dance act, the Mironton Brothers - Achille Saturnin and his exact double - are one of the main attractions at a popular Parisian fairground.  The chance discovery that Achille has just inherited 1957 million francs from a distant relative leads his conniving double to take his place and become the wealthy owner of a magnificent Parisian residence.  Not knowing that he has been robbed of a fortune, Achille loses his job at the fair and ends up busking on the streets with his dancer friend Sylvaine and her 10-year-old brother Réginald.  As his ex-partner struggles to keep body and soul together, life is none-to-rosy for the treacherous double.  He has barely had time to settle into his new life of luxury before he becomes the target of the underworld king Sir William Dewitt and his gang of ruthless hooded criminals, the Ku-Klux-Eiffel.  The latter is so named because the gang transmits coded message from the Eiffel Tower to a vast network of criminals across the whole of Europe.

Dewitt considers himself to be the rightful beneficiary of the fortune that Achille Saturnin inherited so, mistaking the double for Achille, he threatens to kill him unless he hands over all of the money.  Fear of his impending death drives Achille's double into hiding.  From the hotel room that is his new temporary abode he glimpses his former dance partner in the street and sees a neat way out of his difficulties.  The double greets Achille and offers to give him half a million francs if he will impersonate him for one week.  The reason he gives for this deception is quite innocent - he wants to avoid being the butt of a series of practical jokes being played on him by an old acquaintance.  Seeing this as nothing more than a harmless game, Achille gladly accepts and is soon enjoying the high life at his double's grand Parisian mansion.  It isn't long, however, before Dewitt's masked minions show up and take Achille to their secret mountain hideaway in the depths of the French countryside.

The adventure amuses Achille for a while but he soon begins to realise that he is in great danger.  By an ingenious ruse he manages to evade his captors and rejoins his friends Sylvaine and Réginald.  Realising that attack is the best form of defence, Achille tracks Dewitt to Nice, with the intention of capturing him and handing him over to the police.  Sir William proves to be a wilier adversary than Achille had supposed.  Cornered in his hotel room, he summons help and it is the fairground artiste who ends up being taken prisoner.  Once again, Achille is driven at gunpoint to the criminals' mountain H.Q. and, once again, he finds a way to escape from the masked malefactors.

After a frantic pursuit across open countryside, in the course of which he becomes the target of a sniper in a biplane, our hero reaches the capital unharmed.  Now that he has some tangible evidence against the Ku-Klux-Eiffel gang - a receiver and a codebook - Achille is finally able to convince the police of the truth of his fantastic story.  With the leaders of the criminal gang about to rendezvous at the Eiffel Tower for a crucial meeting, the police move in to arrest them en masse.  In the ensuing desperate showdown at the famous Parisian landmark, Achille steels himself for a final reckoning with his evil double.  The mystery of the Eiffel Tower is about to reach its dizzying climax...