A classic

Since this movie has a strong reputation (it is included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list among other things), I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, I didn’t know that, back in the 1910’s and 1920’s, such serial films were actually very popular. Louis Feuillade was apparently the master in this genre and this movie is considered as his magnum opus. Well, with 7 hours of running time, it is considered as one of the longest movies ever made but, to be honest, I don’t actually agree with this assessment. Indeed, it is not a continuous epic story like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ but it is in fact very episodic and, in my opinion, it is a more a vintage mini-series than a very long feature film. Anyway, to be honest, I think it must be quite a drag to watch it all at once and, in my case, I actually watched it the same way it was released, one episode each day over a 10 days period. Anyway, how was the damned thing after all? Well, in spite of its title, it turned out that this movie had actually nothing to do with actual vampires after all. Indeed, it was actually dealing with some bizarre underground gang called ‘The Vampires’. In this group, the most memorable character was definitely Irma Vep, such an intriguing character that it inspired Olivier Assayas not only to make a movie back in the 90’s but also a mini-series much more recently. On the other side, with the good guys, to be honest, I didn’t care much for Philippe Guérande but, on the other hand, Oscar-Cloud Mazamette was very often quite hilarious. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a very interesting watch and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in such vintage features.