Gaumont's master of the serial — Fantômas and Les Vampires turned the real streets of wartime Paris into a landscape of crime, and the surrealists into filmgoers.
Louis Feuillade was a French film director who made the crime serials that first showed what cinema could do with a city. He was born at Lunel, near Montpellier, on 19 February 1873 and died at Nice on 25 February 1925.[1]
He was head of production at Gaumont, the second-largest film company in the world after Pathé[2], and directed something in the region of eight hundred films in twenty years. Almost all of them are lost or forgotten. Three serials are not: Fantômas in 1913, Les Vampires in 1915 and 1916, and Judex in 1916.
Les Vampires is the one that lasted. It runs to ten episodes and about seven hours[3], and it follows a criminal gang through a Paris of rooftops, cellars, hotel corridors and empty night streets, filmed in the real city while the First World War was on.
Its most famous figure is Irma Vep, the gang's cabaret singer and the mistress of its chief, played by Musidora in a black bodysuit. She is the reason the serial keeps being rediscovered. The Surrealists adopted her in the 1920s, and filmmakers have been remaking and quoting her ever since.
Louis Feuillade was born on 19 February 1873 at Lunel, a small town between Montpellier and Nîmes, into a family in the wine trade. He was educated at a Catholic seminary, did his military service, and worked in the family business and then as a journalist.
He was a Catholic and a monarchist by conviction, writing for right-wing papers in the south before he came to Paris in 1898. Nothing in his background pointed towards films, which barely existed as an industry when he was thirty.
Feuillade began selling scenarios to Gaumont around 1905. Alice Guy, the company's head of production and the first woman to direct a film, bought them and then hired him. When she left for the United States in 1907, Feuillade took her job.[4]
Gaumont was one of the two giants of early French cinema, and as artistic director Feuillade was responsible for an enormous output: comedies, melodramas, biblical pictures, chase films, series about children. He worked fast, shot in sequence, used real locations to save money, and rarely rehearsed.
That volume is why so little survives. Films were made as product, printed, circulated and scrapped, and the nitrate stock decayed or burned. Estimates of his total run to about eight hundred titles.[5]
Long before the crime serials, Feuillade had worked out the commercial value of a recurring character. From 1910 he made about seventy short comedies around a small boy billed as Bébé, played by the child actor Clément Mary. When Mary's family asked for more money in 1913, Feuillade replaced him with another child, René Poyen, and started again with a new character called Bout-de-Zan.
In 1911 he announced a different kind of series, La Vie telle qu'elle est — Life As It Is. The publicity promised films about ordinary people in ordinary rooms, with no chases and no spectacle, and Feuillade presented it as the first attempt at realism on film. The series ran about a year and did modest business. It taught him something he used for the rest of his career: audiences would come back for a world they already knew.
In 1913 Feuillade filmed Fantômas, adapting the enormously popular pulp novels of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre about a master criminal who is never caught. The two authors had produced thirty-two volumes in under three years, roughly one a month, and the character was already a household name in France.
He made five feature-length episodes across 1913 and 1914, with René Navarre as Fantômas and Edmund Breon as the police inspector Juve. Fantômas murders, robs and disguises himself, Juve pursues him, and the criminal escapes every time. There is no moral ending, which was part of the appeal and part of the objection.
The films were a commercial success and they set the pattern Feuillade used for the rest of his career: a criminal organisation, a pursuer, real Paris locations, and a story continued across instalments.
Les Vampires was released in ten episodes between November 1915 and June 1916, while France was at war and Paris was under blackout.[3] Feuillade was himself called up in 1915 and discharged the following year on health grounds, and the production was fitted around his service.
The Vampires are not supernatural. They are a criminal gang who rob and murder their way through the city, and a journalist, Philippe Guérande, tries to expose them. The plots are improvised, contradictory and frequently absurd, because Feuillade was writing them as he shot. The gang's chief is killed and replaced twice across the ten episodes, by leaders calling themselves Satanas and Venomous.
What holds Les Vampires together is the way it looks. Feuillade filmed in real apartments, on real roofs, in real streets, at a moment when Paris was half-empty and blacked out, and the result is a city that seems permanently available to crime. Doors open into other buildings; a wall panel slides; a body comes out of a trunk.
The French authorities briefly banned Les Vampires, on the grounds that it glamorised criminals at a time when the country needed order.[6]
Irma Vep — an anagram of vampire — is the gang's cabaret singer and the mistress of its chief, played by the singer and actress Musidora in a black silk bodysuit that covers her from head to foot.[7] She outlasts every change of leadership and ends the serial married to the last of the chiefs.
She is the first great screen image of the criminal woman, and she is presented without apology or punishment for most of the serial's length. The costume made Musidora, born Jeanne Roques in Paris, one of the first French film stars and one of the first women whose image was used to sell a film.
The Surrealists took her up in the 1920s. André Breton and Louis Aragon wrote about the serial, and Musidora became a fixture of their world. Since then Irma Vep has been quoted, remade and argued about repeatedly, including in Olivier Assayas's 1996 film Irma Vep, in which Maggie Cheung plays an actress cast in a remake.
Judex, released in twelve episodes from December 1916, was Feuillade's answer to the complaint that Les Vampires had glamorised crime. Where the earlier serials followed criminals, this one follows an avenger in a black cloak and hat, played by René Cresté, who punishes a corrupt banker. Musidora returned as the villain, a governess called Diana Monti.
It was a considerable success, and it is generally read as a direct ancestor of the masked-hero figure that later became the superhero.[8] Feuillade followed it in 1917 with a sequel, La Nouvelle Mission de Judex.
Feuillade kept the form going for the rest of his life. Tih Minh, in 1918, moved the action to Nice, where Gaumont had a studio and where he now spent much of the year. Barrabas followed in 1920, and then a run of serials built around lost or stolen children: Les Deux Gamines in 1921, L'Orpheline the same year, Parisette in 1922.
The serials Feuillade made after 1918 sold well and are barely discussed now. They are gentler than Les Vampires and Judex, and their plots turn on families, orphans and inheritances rather than on organised crime.
Feuillade was still directing at speed when he died at Nice on 25 February 1925, six days after his fifty-second birthday, following an operation for peritonitis.[1] His last serial, Le Stigmate, was finished by his son-in-law and cameraman Maurice Champreux and released later that year.
His reputation nearly disappeared with the silent era. French critics and directors rebuilt it in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly at the Cinémathèque française, where Henri Langlois programmed the serials for audiences who [9]had never seen them. Alain Resnais, Georges Franju and the New Wave directors all acknowledged him. Franju remade Judex in 1963, from a script co-written by Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux.
Feuillade proved that films could be told in instalments and that an audience would come back week after week for a continuing story — the form television later took as standard.
He also filmed the ordinary city as a place of danger, using real locations rather than sets at a time when studios were the norm, and that documentary surface is exactly why the serials still look modern. What survives of eight hundred films is a handful of titles, and they are enough to place him at the start of a great deal of what came after.
Born on 19 February at Lunel, between Montpellier and Nîmes, into a family in the wine trade.
Is educated at a Catholic seminary. He remains a Catholic and a monarchist by conviction.
Does his military service, then works in the family wine business.
Moves to Paris and works as a journalist on right-wing papers.
Begins selling film scenarios to Gaumont, where Alice Guy, the first woman to direct a film, buys them and then hires him.
Takes over as head of production at Gaumont when Alice Guy leaves for the United States.
Begins the Bébé series of comedies, one of the earliest film series built around a recurring character.
Launches the realist series Life As It Is, filmed in ordinary locations rather than studio sets.
Replaces the child star of the Bébé comedies with René Poyen and begins a new series, Bout-de-Zan.
Films Fantômas, adapting the pulp novels of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre about a master criminal who is never caught.
Completes the fifth and last Fantômas episode. War breaks out and Feuillade is called up.
Is discharged on health grounds and returns to Gaumont. Les Vampires begins release in November.
Les Vampires completes its ten episodes in June. The authorities briefly ban it for glamorising criminals during wartime.
Musidora, in the black bodysuit of Irma Vep, becomes one of the first French film stars.
Releases Judex in twelve episodes from December, following an avenger in a black cloak rather than a criminal.
Releases The New Mission of Judex, a sequel to the success of the first.
Directs Vendémiaire, a film about the war made while it was still being fought.
Directs the serial Tih Minh, shot largely around Nice.
Directs Barrabas, another crime serial.
Directs Les Deux Gamines and L'Orpheline, serials built around lost children.
Directs Parisette, working mostly from the Gaumont studio at Nice.
Directs Vindicta, keeping to the same output in his last full years.
Directs Lucette, one of his final serials.
Le Stigmate, his last serial, is completed by his son-in-law and cameraman Maurice Champreux.
Dies at Nice on 25 February, six days after his fifty-second birthday, following an operation for peritonitis.
André Breton and the Surrealists continue to cite Les Vampires and Musidora as central to their idea of cinema.
Henri Langlois programmes the serials at the Cinémathèque française for audiences who have never seen them.
Georges Franju remakes Judex, in homage to Feuillade.
The Cinémathèque française completes a full restoration of Les Vampires, supervised by Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux.
Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep, in which Maggie Cheung plays an actress cast in a remake of Les Vampires, brings the character to a new audience.
A television series based on Assayas's film brings Irma Vep back again.
Film
Feuillade's ten-episode serial about a criminal secret society loose in wartime Paris — and about Irma Vep, the gang's black-clad lieutenant, played by Musidora in a role the century never got over. Shot fast in real streets emptied by the war, it looks like documentary and moves like a dream, which is exactly why the surrealists claimed it as scripture.
Mentored · 1914–1918
Her formative screen years were spent under his direction at Gaumont — Les Vampires, then the title role in Judex — and she honored the Feuillade era for the rest of her life, down to her late work preserving its history at the Cinémathèque française.
Worked for · 1905–1925
Gaumont's artistic director from 1907 — running the studio's production while directing at a pace of hundreds of films, Fantômas and Les Vampires among them, until his death in 1925.
A French film director, born in 1873 and died in 1925, who ran production at Gaumont and directed something like eight hundred films. He is remembered for three crime serials: Fantômas, Les Vampires and Judex.
A ten-episode crime serial released between November 1915 and June 1916, running about seven hours. A criminal gang called the Vampires robs and murders across Paris while a journalist tries to expose them. It was filmed in the real city, blacked out and half-empty because of the war.
The cabaret singer of the criminal gang in Les Vampires, and the mistress of its chief, played by the actress and singer Musidora in a black silk bodysuit. Her name is an anagram of vampire. She is the first great screen image of the criminal woman, and the Surrealists adopted her in the 1920s.
The French authorities briefly banned it on the grounds that it glamorised criminals at a time when the country was at war and needed order. Feuillade's answer was Judex, whose hero is an avenger rather than a criminal.
Because they were made as product. He directed at enormous speed for Gaumont — estimates run to about eight hundred titles — and the films were printed, circulated and scrapped, with the nitrate stock decaying or burning. Only a fraction survives.
He proved an audience would come back week after week for a continuing story, which is the form television took as standard, and he filmed the ordinary city as a place of danger using real locations. Henri Langlois revived him at the Cinémathèque, Georges Franju remade Judex in 1963, and Olivier Assayas built Irma Vep around Les Vampires in 1996.
Worked for · 1905–1925
Gaumont's artistic director from 1907 — running the studio's production while directing at a pace of hundreds of films, Fantômas and Les Vampires among them, until his death in 1925.
Mentored · 1914–1918
Her formative screen years were spent under his direction at Gaumont — Les Vampires, then the title role in Judex — and she honored the Feuillade era for the rest of her life, down to her late work preserving its history at the Cinémathèque française.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Louis Feuillade and their work.
Reference article used to establish that Pathe, not Gaumont, was the largest film company in the world before 1914.
French encyclopedia entry used for the early career and the scale of his output.
Reference entry used for the working method and the surviving filmography.
Episode-by-episode account of the serial used to check the plot, the cast and Irma Vep's role in the gang.
Critical essay on Les Vampires, Irma Vep and Judex and their later influence.
Essay on Judex, the masked-avenger figure, and Georges Franju's 1963 remake.
Critical essay on Feuillade's serials and their rediscovery at the Cinematheque francaise.
Distributor's notes on the 1996 restoration of the serial supervised by Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux.
Reference entry on the studio Feuillade ran production for, used for its scale and its rivalry with Pathe.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Louis Feuillade page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Louis Feuillade page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Louis Feuillade page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Louis Feuillade page.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Louis Feuillade. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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