TWEET

 

O, SYLVIA!

 

Sylvia Koscina as the last minute heroine of Judex: Daisy, the fortuitously passing acrobat.

WAR OF DREAMS

 

Judex, d. Georges Franju (1963)

Thirty years ago, when I was a film student, I'd spend my down days lying on the bed in my little room and watching film after film I'd taped off the telly over many years, sometimes all day until it was dark and time to go to the pub. I watched everything I could, but I had a somewhat self-conscious bias for 'the pantheon': Truffaut, Godard, Bergman, Bunuel, Kurosawa, Hawks, Hitchcock, Cocteau, Franju. 

Hitchcock, Cocteau and Franju provided the most watched films - Vertigo, Orphee and Judex, respectively. Whatever criteria of film art I currently possess was largely formed by repeat exposure to these three masterpieces.

Judex has, over the years, become my favourite, not least because its wears its brilliance so lightly. Franju's homage to Louis Feuillade's seven hour crime serial from 1914* is a hugely engaging 90 minute film that moves quickly but smoothly, as if on castors, from one striking scene to another until it ends (the transitions sometimes take the viewer by surprise, and it takes a minute to become reoriented). Franju is an inventive and stylish director, but not a flashy one: his greatest skill here is in creating a wholly believable secret dream world where people with incredible talent (for good, for evil) are conducting an epic running battle while everyone else goes about their boring business.

Judex has an incredible internal integrity: everything is off by a few degrees, but it is never weird or outlandish - the settings and the situation and the people all makes sense, they are recognisably real. There is something of the 'uncanny valley' in it, i.e. the discomforting feeling real humans get when confronted with something almost but not quite human-like, here extended to a world which is familiar in most ways but simultaneously slightly askew. The viewer is not uneasy, however, instead they are intrigued and, besides, Franju does everything he can to entertain: a non-stop plot, crisp cinematography, wonderful visuals, convincing and attractive characters, and a great score of music and composed sound by Maurice Jarre.

Towards the end, the absurdities begin to pile up to almost delirious effect. The mysterious crimefighter Judex, who so far has been presented as an almost omniscient mastermind and technical genius, is reduced to sending the comic relief detective and his street urchin sidekick to a local bar to make a phone call to get help. From nowhere, a passing Circus provides a hitherto unknown beautiful acrobat (the wonderful Sylvia Koscina) who is immediately caught up in the action. Ironically, it is her, not Judex, who hastens the conclusion, becoming engaged in a life or death struggle on a Parisian rooftop with the delightfully evil, catsuit clad supervillain(ess). 

The heroic acrobat Daisy also has the best line in the film (perhaps any film), when she meets up with her old flame, quite by chance: 'Remember my Uncle, the evil lion tamer? The lions ate him! We are free to be together!'

I've probably seen Judex forty times. I never tire of it, I hope I never will.

* an end title states that the film is 'in memory of an unhappy time', but then 1914 did mark the beginning of the slaughter of WW1, in which 1.3m French soldiers were killed along with half a million civilians.

STRANGE MEETING

 

The early nineteen sixties were a boom period for avant garde film makers. Not only was equipment becoming more affordable and portable, the conventions (and cliches) of the avant garde were not yet fully established, making it a fertile and open period for experimentation. 

In 1963's Sretanje (Encounter) (1963), young Croatian amateur Vladimir Petek gives us a series of shots of a young woman, with the film variously scratched, punctured, drawn on, pixelated, polarised, solarised, cut in half and glued back together in post production to provide a discombobulating and visually rich breaking down of what film can - and is supposed to - do.

Thanks to Jörg for the tip off - and all the other pointers.

YOU NEED HANDS

The Crawling Hand, d. Herbert L. Strock (1963) 

Here with a super low budget film which uses the space race to colour a fairly traditional horror story. A moon shoot ends in disaster when, on the return journey, the rocket goes haywire. Despite having run out of oxygen some twenty minutes previously, the Astronaut's frightened (and frightening) face appears on the mission control monitors, alternately hissing ‘kill!’ and ‘press the red’, i.e. the button that will destroy him and his ship. As the ship is about to crash into a populated area, mission control press the button and the ship explodes, showering debris all over the coastline including, on a secluded beach, the Astronaut’s arm, sheared off at the elbow, but still wearing its glove and spacesuit sleeve (I was reminded of J.G Ballard at this stage, although it’s too early for his work to have been an influence. Perhaps Ballard saw this film?)   

A brilliant but brooding young science student (‘I’m going to the top – and I’m making it on my own!’) discovers the severed arm, wraps it in a shower curtain and takes it back to his digs where it promptly strangles his landlady and then takes him over, forcing him to do bad things until he gets flu and his high temperature weakens the arm to the extent that he can break the link and stab the severed limb repeatedly with a broken bottle. Hungry junkyard cats finish the job. Or do they? No, not really. The uncanny is not so easily disposed of.      

There is probably a monograph to be written about crawling hands in the movies, from The Beast With Five Fingers through to The Evil Dead and beyond. They're mainly horror films, of course, severed hands don't normally creep around in anything else.

I CAN SEE FOR MILES

The Man With The X Ray Eyes, d. Roger Corman (1963)

Whilst experimenting with increasing man’s field of vision,Dr Xavier (Ray Milland) uses himself as a guinea pig and finds that he is soon able to see beyond the visible spectrum, then through clothes, walls, flesh and, ultimately, through the fabric of the universe itself.

The proto psychedelic visuals are cheap but effective, and the film taps into the same rich metaphysical vein as The Incredible Shrinking Man, one of the most profound movies Hollywood ever produced. It’s great fun, too, and the ending is quite brilliant.

It’s worth noting that taking LSD (under medical supervision) was a popular, perfectly legal pastime in Hollywood in 1963 (particularly for Cary Grant who claimed to have been ‘reborn’ as a result of his numerous acid trips), although this film is not about that, of course.

TO THE LAST MAN

The Outer Limits: Demon With A Glass Hand, d. Byron Haskin (1964)

One thousand years into the future, Earth is invaded by a vicious race called The Kyben. Overwhelmed, the humans completely disappear from the planet, unleashing a radioactive plague before they do so. One man, Trent, is transported back into the past, pursued by the invaders, who believe he knows where the population of Earth has gone. Trent has only a ten day memory and a glass robotic hand, missing several fingers. The hand tells him that he will need to retrieve the other fingers from The Kyben in order to find out the secrets of his mission. He’ll wish he hadn’t bothered.  

The notion of the Last or Eternal Man is a familiar one, having appeared in mythology since people started writing legends down. Here, writer Harlan Ellison pimps up the notion with time travel , and the idea that sometimes heroes are not always in charge of their own destiny, that they do heroic things in spite of themselves, or because they simply have no choice. It’s an amazing episode of a very good series, and the ending is brilliantly poignant. The Last or Eternal Man will always lonely, as no-one else can wait or live as long as he can.

I’m particularly fascinated by the way Trent disposes of the Kyben villains: having travelled through a time portal from the future, they wear medallions to anchor them in the past. When Trent tears the medallions from them, they disappear. This doesn’t kill them, nor does it return them to their own time. Instead, it sets them adrift in time, a fate worse than death, and one that will last forever - and they will feel every single second.

YOU'RE FADING IN AND OUT II

The Outer Limits: The Borderland, d. Leslie Stevens (1963)

When a scientist invents a machine that acts as a bridge between dimensions, a grieving millionaire funds the experiment, hoping that he will be able to contact his dead son. During the final experiment, the scientist is literally saved by the love of a good woman. The millionaire has no love, only pain, and so dies.