Cinémathèque, Serial and Victor Jasset.

Le cinémathèque Française' Henri site has reorganised so that you can see everything they are offering. It's only a sheet of thumbnails, a minute fraction of their huge holdings, but there's enough there to keep a serious enthusiast busy for a month - include the entire Ivan Mozjoukine serial of which one one complete hour episode is a punch-up between him and Charles Vanel that demolishes the room, Michael Curtiz' first surviving film, titles by Ukraine's leading director, a couple of Alan Dwan westerns, Jacques Feyder's remarkable Les nouveaux monsieurs and Protéa, a 1913 film by Victor Jasset.

Victor Jasset

The Eclair company's Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset’s name is one that only seems to occur in the early sections of books about film history, the bits you skip over to get to Film Noir and Ingmar Bergman, but it turns out that, in the nineteen tens when he was a major player, Jasset was bridging the gap between Georges Meliés and Louis Feuillade, still using the stage magician devices of the former but an accomplished exponent of the episode thriller material of the latter in items like Jasset's Zigomar serials. 

 

Jasset’s 1913 Protéa even fields lead Josette Andriot in black tights, making her an early entry in the cycle that runs though Musidora in Feuillade’s Les Vampyrs, Judith Magré in  Franju’s Judex and Maggie Chen in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vip. As an added bonus the film is a surprisingly entertaining hour’s viewing for it's day and age. Though largely staged in one take one scene wide shots it features several of the innovations which were shaping cinema to come. 

The plot has fictional European country Messine sign a secret treaty which threatens the interests of equally non-existent Celtie, so their Chief of Police phones the country’s number one secret agent Protéa / Andriot. In silence the image cuts between the two sides of the call and gives us a good look at the chief’s imposing candle stick ‘phone set up.

Andriot agrees on condition that her wing man The Eel / Lucien Bataille be released from prison and, once they get the cuffs off him he escapes the police guard, showing up like Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher, where they think they’ve lost him. From this point, the film offers non-stop action melodrama.

 Going into business, the pair get diplomat Viscount Osthansen, who holds the document, arrested by planting contraband in his valise. They emerge from the furniture in the the Messine Foreign Office, and are only thwarted by the night watchman (already parallel action). Further exploits offer Protéa concealed in the pillar present from the Viceroy of Numidia. She chloroforms the minister, replaces him with a lookalike dummy and goes on to present herself as the leader of an all-girl gypsy orchestra at a Messine Foreign office ball. Though the Viscount recognises her, the intrepid duo still manage to set the place on fire making their escape.

 

Now ace detective Inspector Max heads up the chase, raiding their apartment, where the pair use the disguises ready in their bed/wardrobe, and flee through a secret trap door to acquire a traveling zoo, with the Eel taking on the man-monkey character. (Don't ask!) At a stop-over at an inn near the border, Inn Keeper Mévisto sees through their new identities. Protéa assures the safety of the stolen treaty by placing it in the cage of lioness Sadie and pulls a convenient lever dropping the pursuers through the floor. Action continues with an early car chase and the equally destructive police set fire to the one timber bridge across the border (there can’t be much traffic) to thwart the couple’s escape but the leads go on in peasant disguises using stolen bicycles and as mounted soldiers, finally delivering the incriminating treaty to Celtie authorities.

The non stop scheming and switching identities holds attention even when plausibility suffers. The piece is quite elaborately staged with plenty of costumed extras and constant changes of setting. The circus material is particularly striking with the stars themselves working a small caged lion. 

Mlle Andriot is kind of chunky for modern taste but she carries the part with authority. Playing is reasonably restrained though they do slap papers they hold and point to them in anger. No one presses the back of their hand to their forehead. 

We can spot Jacques Feyder and Joseph Von Sternberg's mentor Emile Chautard in the support cast. The technical work was state of the art and then some. Even the opening titles, where they vignette the lead in her different characters spaced by repeating the image of a mask, were already quite a big ask for 1913 technology meaning a dozen passes through the camera for the negative. 

 

Title art.

Photographer Lucien N. Andriot even attempts to follow the action with the camera at one stage. He would have a long and occasionally distinguished career, shifting to Hollywood and Lewis Milestone’s Halleluya I’m a Bum along with a couple of René Clair's American films, in with a stream of B pictures. However note some of the effects, like shedding the Eel’s first disguise, were done with simple jump cuts and substitution in the style of Meliés.

 Protéa is more fun than its similar Italian contemporary Il Giglio Nero / The Sign of the Black Lilly which has surfaced and we've got to wonder what else the pre-WW1 fantastic action film had to offer. You must remember this is all happening before Fantômas, before The Perils of Pauline, before Dr. Mabuse. The adventure serials for which Louis Feuillade is conventionally given originator credit were already a vigorous line in film making. Me, I want to see Victor Jasset's Zigomar vs. Nick Carter. 

 The Henri copy of Protéa is sharp and detailed if marginally dupey. It has been attractively tinted and missing sections are represented by new title cards. The captions are in French.

 

Barrie Pattison 2022

Barrie Pattison 2022.