Les Vampires [Serial]

A seminal mood piece, this ten-part, seven-hour serial took the relatively innocent Perils of Pauline-style film popularized by Hollywood and gave it a grim, dark twist. Though the title may seem strange -- the protagonists aren't literally vampires and the film is not an exercise in horror -- it actually fits writer/director Louis Feuillade's themes very well. The criminal underclass controlling the story's action is metaphorically sucking the lifeblood out of the Parisian bourgeoisie, and the creative and bizarre methods they use to commit their crimes make for great fun, combining lurid pulp-fiction melodrama, exciting action sequences, and high camp. Rediscovered by French New Wave directors, surrealists, and theorists such as Henri Langlois, Alain Resnais, Luis Buñuel, and André Breton, Les Vampires has enjoyed a steadily improving reputation among film buffs thanks to its irrepressible energy, erotic subtext (Musidora has a remarkable, arresting physical presence as the mysterious Grand Vampire Irma Vep), and irredeemably evil protagonists. Feuillade creates a world where logic seems suspended (apparently dead characters pop back up in the story, for example, and time passes at an irregular pace), and his use of colored gels (blue for outdoor scenes, yellow for lamplight, purple for nighttime) heightens the film's sense of "otherness." This atmosphere reflects the sense of dread and uncertainty that permeated Europe at the time of the film's creation, when the continent headed off into a war of massive proportions and unbelievable devastation. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide