Fantomas

My readers know I’m a big fan of Paris, France, having lived there for 11 years.  A blog on Baron Haussman should be forthcoming in the near future when I finish reading about him.  Recently I finished two excellent books on the city, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris, by Graham Robb, and Paris: The Secret History, by Andrew Hussey.  The former book spotlights individual moments in the city’s history from Napoleon’s first visit (well before taking power) all the way to “Sarko” and the immigration riots in recent times.  While the segments proceed in chronological order, they are not continuous.  Hussey’s book, by contrast, is a continuous history of the city from Roman-era Lutetia to the present.  The amount of overlapping is fairly minimal, and the books complement each other well. 

 Hussey’s book alerted me to the early 20^th century (“Belle Epoque”) gangs of thieves and hooligans who called themselves “the Apaches”, and an intriguing fictional character, created by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, known as Fantomas.  Normally I’d seek out the French language originals and read them, but in this particular case I decided to “cheat” and go directly to the silent movies made by Louis Feuillade just before WWI.  The DVD set I purchased from Amazon has 5 episodes spread out over 3 discs.  This is quicker than reading the original serials (43 in all); I can’t recommend them as I haven’t read them, but the movies were intriguing.  It’s a kick to see Paris in 1913, much of which I can recognize – I liked the reference to Ave. Richard Wallace in Neuilly, a street I’ve been on many times.  Many segments take place at midnight but were obviously filmed in broad daylight, so the filmmaker tints the film blue to indicate night time.  Feuillade worked for Gaumont from 1906 to 1924 and made 600-800 films, but these were mostly 10 minute serials. 

 Fantomas is an anti-hero, a protagonist of pure evil genius.  He is a master of disguise and impersonation, and has no scruples about murdering anyone to achieve his goals.  Typically he seems to seduce lonely rich widows (after having murdered their husbands).  In one instance, on death row and facing imminent execution, he changed places with a stage actor – who was saved from the guillotine by the clever Inspector Juve, who acts as his consistent nemesis.  Unlike the bumbling and incompetent Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies, Juve is fairly bright and imaginative, though always seems to be just a few steps behind Fantomas.  In one episode Juve actually helps Fantomas to escape from jail in Louvain, Belgium (home of Stella Artois beer) so he can be tracked down to France.  Juve is assisted by his “Watson”, the journalist Fandor, who reminds me a bit of Tintin.  Because he assumes different identities and disguises, Fantomas’ only “look” is the black ninja gear and hood (above left), though he doesn’t seem to know martial arts or be especially physically dangerous, nor does he have any magic or super powers. 

 Mike Patton.  Actually, I’d heard of the name Fantomas much earlier, as this was a supergroup band project of Mike Patton, best known as the singer for Faith No More.  This band lasted from 1995-2005 and put out 4 studio albums, but despite expropriating the name, none of this material actually has anything to do with the character of Fantomas himself.  I haven’t heard any of it, as Mr. Bungle (his other non-FNM project) never impressed me, although Patton’s FNM material post-Jim Martin hasn’t been too bad.