710 Judex

[swo17]

Judex



This effortlessly cool crime caper, directed by Georges Franju, is a marvel of dexterous plotting and visual invention. Conceived as an homage to Louis Feuillade’s 1916 cult silent serial of the same name, Judex kicks off with the mysterious kidnapping of a corrupt banker by a shadowy crime fighter (American magician Channing Pollock) and spins out into a thrillingly complex web of deceptions. Combining stylish sixties modernism with silent-cinema touches and even a few unexpected sci-fi accents, Judex is a delightful bit of pulp fiction and a testament to the art of illusion.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interview from 2007 with cowriter Jacques Champreux
• Interview from 2012 with actor Francine Bergé
• Franju le visionnaire, a fifty-minute program from 1998 on director Georges Franju's career
• Two short films by Franju: Hôtel des Invalides (1951), about the Paris military complex, and Le grand Méliès (1952), about director Georges Méliès
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien, along with a selection of commentary by Franju (dual-format only)

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

Feature currently disabled

[Soothsayer]

Extremely happy for this announcement!!

[Finch]

Glad I didn't get the MoC DVD that I've been considering quite a few times. I loved Eyes without a Face and can't wait to see Judex.

[EddieLarkin]

A Kalat commentary would have been perfect for this.

Glad I didn't get the MoC DVD that I've been considering quite a few times.

Don't forget the MoC set is a double feature.

[Cold Bishop]

Don't forget the MoC set is a double feature.

Or you could hope against hope that Criterion plans on releasing the full miniseries for the other film... That's not crazy, is it?

[andyli]

A Kalat commentary would have been perfect for this.

Maybe Kalat would have done it if it's the Feuillade version.

[Ashirg]

I wonder if the missing footage from the MoC disc will be available on Criterion, even as an extra...

[dwk]

Criterion has added two short films by Franju to this:

-Two short films by Franju: "Hôtel des Invalides" (1951), about the Paris military complex, and "Le grand Méliès" (1952), about director Georges Méliès

[swo17]

And this just became a must-buy.

[htshell]

Wow! Wonderful.

[zedz]

The Melies doc (which is great) was previously released by Flicker Alley in their First Wizard of Cinema Melies box.

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[Grisbi]

I'd already assumed a double dip was in order here seeing as how I love to death Franju and this film, and Hotel des Invalides is an essential, major masterpiece, but those caps in the beaver review seal the deal - unbelievably gorgeous. The grayscale in the fifth comparison cap is a thing of pure beauty.

Of course the MoC is well worth hanging onto for Nuit Rouges.

[Red Screamer]

Bluray.com

[felipe]

Criterion's website still lists the dual-format as 2 discs, but that information must be incorrect, right? The only DF edition released was the 3-disc one?

[swo17]

See for yourself

[felipe]

See for yourself

I know the 3-disc version exists, my question is whether Criterion also released a 2-disc DF edition (the one they're supposedely selling on their website).

[Bürgermeister]

See for yourself

I know the 3-disc version exists, my question is whether Criterion also released a 2-disc DF edition (the one they're supposedely selling on their website).

They just haven't updated the listing. There's no 2 disc DF version.

[felipe]

But the DVD-only edition is really 1 disc (as A hard day's night)?

[swo17]

I wonder if the missing footage from the MoC disc will be available on Criterion, even as an extra...

I don't know if this has been mentioned anywhere else, but the cut on the Criterion release is the same as the one on the MoC. In other words, a couple minutes of mysterious, inexplicable cuts, but nothing detrimental.

[knives]

The shorts on here are really wonderful to the point I want Crit to keep releasing Franjus if just for these little extras. The Melies is as awe struck and optimistic as it needs to be reflecting the idea of those early years masterfully with a tour de force central sequence duplicating with a smile Melies films. The other film is much more serious and in line with the other Franju I've seen utilizing military fetishism as an argument against war (it's telling the only patient we see is a youngish (in their 40s I think) looking fellow bound to a wheelchair not to mention that opening scroll asking for no angry letters. It's not quite as effective as Blood of the Beasts, but at least matches up to Resnais' films from the same period.

[therewillbeblus]

Perhaps this is an odd Halloween favorite, but there's a fitting pleasure watching Franju dance around his settings shooting actors playing characters playing dress-up that gets me into the spirit with childlike nostalgia. Sometimes the most satisfying movies are the ones that look like they were as much fun to make as they are to watch, and this is that film. After a brief setup, the characters shift into their roles with nosedives that promote dense and shameless adoptions of one-note wants and needs, embracing the binary parts of good guys and bad guys with confident grace. The abridgment of the serial into a short adaptation is successful because it acknowledges its boldness and futility if approached with self-serious pretension. Instead, Franju opts for wildly splicing together beautiful, inspired scenes that ooze with creativity, where it may not make sense from the standpoint of the kind of developing narrative we've come to expect, but remains polished with a playful forfeit of care for those expectations that handfeed us tight-knit explanations of character motives and relationship dynamics.

As a result of Franju and his crew abiding by the cardinal rule of movie magic, each scene feels like it could be the opening or climax of an episode of a serial, drawing us into the action with riveting pizzazz. This film is imagination on steroids, and keeps us suspended with continuous curiosity, since a lot of the possibilities of cinema are actualized as non sequiturs planted with impulsive urgency, at a rapid pace that disallows us to predict what the next scene will bring. We aren't given any blueprint to grant us foresight into specific schemas of action; an amusing juxtaposition against the clear yet broad cookie-cutter impressions of characterization and genre molds. Ultimately what we get is fun comfort food, but high class nonetheless, where each shot is constructed to persuade the realization that cinema is alive, and doesn't need to follow the rules to be so digestible. How does one cram so many inspired visual ideas into 90 minutes, while meeting the criteria of crime thriller, superhero detective story, twisted mystery, and dark fantasy narrative skeletons all at once? The mood can aptly be described as a James Bond giallo, which is as soothing and insane as it sounds.

[therewillbeblus]

The Melies is as awe struck and optimistic as it needs to be reflecting the idea of those early years masterfully with a tour de force central sequence duplicating with a smile Melies films.

I liked Hôtel des Invalides, but I was swallowed up by Le grand Méliès, which uses Melies' own film language and self-referential gags to construct a docu-narrative. I imagine Fincher has something similar in store with Mank's meditation on classical Hollywood, but Franju's imaginative take on a biographical doc is something to behold (and like Judex, he outshines his influences here in making a film I prefer to any one Melies through producing a layered amalgamation). Even though I don't love all his work, when the creative juices are flowing, he seems to be revolutionizing the subject at stake (including Thérèse Desqueyroux, arguably his best work, where the novelistic density is somehow transformed into distinctly cinematic terms).

[domino harvey]

I revisited this after finally watching Feuillade's original and unfortunately, whatever positives I once saw in this are gone in a puff of smoke. There are some unusual choices here in Franju's adaptation/homage, but when remaking a film that is already good, there is a strong impetus on the recreator to improve on what already needed no improving. Nothing here does so. Take the most immediate addition, the use of life-like bird masks at a costume party replacing the staid dinner party of the original film. That is indeed something new. But what function does this change serve? And I mean on any level, including aesthetic-- I don't consider the mere reality of a realistic bird mask to be a self-determined positive. This film shows its seams in close quarters with the original, because it removes all character, motivation, and any semblance at seriality. What's left are a series of highlights that make it play like an 8mm condensed breakdown of the cine-roman. But the biggest sin here is that Franju is TERRIBLE at filming action. I don't mean sequences of adventure and daring. I mean literal action, people moving within a space on screen. This movie is padded, stuffed, and smothered in awkward movement by the actors within the frame. Take any five minutes and watch how hard it is for this film's poor imitation of Musidora to remove her secret blade, or how the tiara gets stuck in the hair of the girl from L'Appartement des filles, or how difficult it is for people to walk across any room they are placed within, or how any other scene looks like a filmed first take. I now realize now how well this film serves as a distillation of everything bad in Pleins feux sur l'assassin, and how a director loving Feuillade matters little for configuring that admiration into a competing work of art. This failure also shows how much more skillful Chabrol and Juan Luis Bunuel were at doing this kind of thing with their even-better in retrospect miniseries of Fantomas.