Ramsey's Rambles By Ramsey Campbell JUDEX Included in JUDEX/NUITS ROUGES M 1963, Eureka/Masters of Cinema, £24.99, 93m 33s, PAL DVD-2
Most remakes expand on their originals, not necessarily to the benefit of either. It was clear that, in remaking Louis Feuillade’s silent serial Judex, Georges Franju would have to go the other way, given the length (five and a half hours) of Feuillade’s film. In a brief but informative inter- view on the Eureka disc, Feuillade’s grandson Jacques Champreux reveals that Franju would have preferred to remake Feuillade’s Fantomas. Nevertheless, Champreux’s script seems to have engaged Franju’s imagination. I’d call his film less a remake than a dream of the original. It opens with an iris shot of banker Favraux (Michel Vitold) that both pays homage to silent cinema and establishes a moral distance from the character, a withdrawal that’s continued in the next shots, which track back to include his aged secre- tary Vallieres (Channing Pollock). Favraux has re- ceived a warning letter from Judex, whom Vallieres identifies before saying that he doesn’t understand what Judex (in fact, his alter ego) wants. How should we take this? Perhaps that Vallieres is Judex’s preferred self, able to watch over Favraux’s daughter Jacqueline (Édith Scob) without becom- ing personally involved with her. As in the original serial, Vallieres is disguised while Judex bears the character’s real face, but in this version Pollock’s almost impassive performance comes close to rendering that face a mask. Even Judex’s body language is virtually unreadable, whereas that of Vallieres—stately and stooping, a little jerky, like a
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grounded bird—embodies the character. Most of the performers adopt a minimalist acting style that can be read as a riposte to silent dramatics (though the Gallic gesturing of Feuillade’s cast is unex- pectedly close to naturalism). On the other hand, the single shot in which Favraux proposes to the governess in a single static shot directly recalls Feuillade’s contemplative style.
Favraux hires detective Cocantin (Jacques Jouanneau) to investigate Judex, despite having concluded that the letter is a servant’s notion of a joke. In this film, motivations often shift if they are present at all. Cocantin is introduced to Jacqueline (who first appears distorted by a window) and her daughter Alice. He entertains the little girl with memories of ALICE IN WONDERLAND (which intro- duces the theme of dreaming) and inadvertently identifies Favraux with the White Rabbit. A victim of Favraux’s financial practices, Pierre Kerjean (René Génin) approaches him only to be run over by him. He’s avenged at a masked ball, in a scene that begins with Judex resurrecting an apparently dead dove. Is the religious symbolism accidental? I’d suggest that it is at least irrelevant, despite the resurrections scattered through the film—that it has the random quality of images in dreams. Equally, is Favraux’s collapse before he drinks from the glass Judex offers him at mid- night an example of magical misdirection or a deliberate lapse of narrative logic? The ball is in- tercut with Cocantin telling Alice a bedtime story—
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