Fantômas (1964)

(In French, On TV, March 2019) If you want to immerse yourself in 1960s French pop film, you can do much worse than to look at Fantômas. It’s bright, colourful, loopy and a bit messy. The premise is slightly annoying in its childishness—having to do with a super-competent criminal villain always in control who’s obviously never going to get caught by our pursuing protagonist. The predictability of his slipperiness is magnified by the film’s tendency to loudly announce what it’s going to do in the next five minutes … and then do exactly what we can see coming. Having renowned comedian Louis de Funès in the protagonist’s role certainly doesn’t help, as his comic grimacing and antics keep the film shifting between an attempt at serious action filmmaking (as limited as it could be in 1960s France) and a far broader comedy. Fantômas is still decently entertaining, but it suffers from a lack of tonal control that feels odd to modern audiences. This being said, there are a few decent action beats here, considering that the French industry was busy taking lessons from the James Bond series and had (at the time) very little of the professional resources and tricks of the trade that today’s action filmmakers take for granted. (Even small things as stuntmen—a lot of the stunts were made by the actors themselves, or by first-time stuntmen.) Helping to tie things together is Jean Marais, quite good in a variety of roles, including Fantômas and one of his pursuers. Ultimately, though, Fantômas’ ever-shifting tone and sometimes-amateurish filmmaking do add to its period charm—you won’t see a film like this today, and while that’s not a bad thing, it does mean that you’ll have to go back to the vintage Fantômas to get the full experience.