Fantômas Over Paris
episode 4: Fantômas contre Fantômas
(First screened in February 1914.)
The fourth of Feuillade's Fantômas films opens at the terrace of a restaurant in the parc des Buttes Chaumont:
Conveniently local to the Cité Elgé, this restaurant had already featured in the preceding Fantômas film, 'Le Mort qui tue'.
There are only two other exterior locations in Fantômas contre Fantômas, neither of which I can identify. The first is the new home of Lady Beltham, apparently near the Parc des Princes:
There are only two other exterior locations in Fantômas contre Fantômas, neither of which I can identify. The first is the new home of Lady Beltham, apparently near the Parc des Princes:
The other is the wasteland where Fantômas meets up with his gang:
There appears to be one other exterior, a street next to the Palais de Justice, on the île de la Cité. Kidnapped by Fantômas's gang (who think he is Fantômas), Juve is passed through a window and lowered down in a sack, via scaffolding, to a waiting automobile:
This is not, however, the quai des Orfèvres, nor any other part of the île de la Cité, but a studio confection of a street in front of a painted backdrop:
This same backdrop had been used by Feuillade the year before, in Bout de Zan vole un éléphant, where the street was purely generic:
When compared with the first three episodes, Fantômas contre Fantômas offers very little of Paris for the cinetopographer to discover, though not when compared with Le Faux Magistrat, the following episode. The last episode of Feuillade's Fantômas series avoids Paris altogether. The action takes place in and between Saint Calais, a small provincial town 190 kilometres from Paris, and the Belgian city of Louvain.
For details of these locations, see the fifth and final part of this posting, Fantômas Over Belgium, next on this screen.
For details of these locations, see the fifth and final part of this posting, Fantômas Over Belgium, next on this screen.