1916 - JUDEX a film serial in 12 parts-prologue through episode 3

Louis Feuillade's serial filmed before World War 1 the prologue and first three chapters set up the storyline. A corrupt banker with a beautiful but clueless daughter is threatened with death by the avenger Judex if he doesn't turn over his money to the poor.

Judex drugs the banker Favraux and fakes his death holding him captive at his secret base. The banker's daughter Jacqueline thinking her father dead relocates to Paris where she's a victim of a gang of crooks led by the evil Diana Monti.

Judex and his brother Roger (?) rescue Jacqueline with a pack of trained dogs that locate and take her to safety. Episode 3 ends with Judex starting to fall in love with Jacqueline.

So far entertaining and fast moving.

The total serial running length is 300 minutes, so probably the first three chapters are about 100 minutes.

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1.03.01

1916 - 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA the silent version

The problem with silent movies isn't that they are silent, the problem is that they frequently are stupid. This is one of the first versions of the Jules Verne story and it's a mess.

 

The film is actually a mash up of 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, along with The Mysterious Island. The filmmakers also throw in a jungle girl, a revolution in an Indian Kingdom, and some sharks. The actor playing Captain Nemo is some white guy who is covered in deep brown makeup which is reminiscent of a blackface minstrel show performer, pretty uncool. Ditto the makeup job on the jungle girl who of course just happens to be Captain Nemo's long lost daughter, who was kidnapped by an evil British soldier who killed her mother and then sailed away with her where she ended up on the mysterious island with escaped civil war soldiers.

Probably one of the worst offenders for a silent film is explaining everything on a title card then showing the action, it's like watching the same scene twice only the second time it's played in over exaggerated pantomimes instead of performances. It's like watching mimes running amok in a movie. This is the standard storytelling technique used throughout thiz movie and it made watching this thing a real killer to get through it.

It appears they actually built some sort of submarine type ship and floated it on the ocean and there was also some underwater photography that must have been hard to photograph in 1916.

 

If silent movies have a reputation as being somewhat silly today this is the kind of film that gives them that reputation. D.W. Griffith was making fairly sophisticated films by 1916 so the excuse of film being a new medium to work in was no excuse in this case.

105 tedious minutes.