Fantômas contre Fantômas (1949)
Directed by Robert Vernay

Film Review

Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's iconic master criminal Fantômas has undergone several transformations in the course of his long cinematic career - from the sinister shape-shifting sadist in Louis Feuillade's series of silent masterpieces (1913-14) to the sarcastic green-skinned alien inflicted on audiences in the mid-1960s by André Hunebelle.  Between these - the two most enduring of Fantômas's screen outings - another three films were made in France featuring the ruthless arch-criminal, all pretty respectable thrillers in their own right, but none doing full justice to the legendary Allain-Souvestre creation.

Paul Fejos's Fantômas (1932) and Jean Sacha's Fantômas (1947) were both valiant attempts to pluck the iconic criminal out of his original Belle Époque surroundings and plant him in the modern age, in a similar vein to Universal's contemporary revamp of the Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1940s.  In both of these films, Fantômas appropriates the fruits of modern technology (aeroplanes, silencer-fitted guns, death rays) to support him in his nefarious and murderous exploits.  In the arch-criminal's next film, Fantômas contre Fantômas, it is from the recently defeated Nazis that his writers draw their inspiration - specifically the highly immoral trepanning experiments that were widely conducted by Nazi scientists in concentration camps during the Second World War.

The nightmarish notion that a person's identity and behaviour can be radically altered by drilling a hole in his skull is a chilling one, and this would seem to be a subject better suited for a full-on modern horror film than a mainstream French thriller of the 1940s.  Fantômas contre Fantômas contains many scenes of a genuinely horrific - even sadistic - nature, prefiguring (and sometimes surpassing) what Georges Franju would later inflict on his audiences with Les Yeux sans visages (1960).  In a sinister underground laboratory, a terrified victim cries out in vain as a crowd of mask-wearing surgeons close in on him and pin him to the operating table.  Later, a man falls into a vat of acid with a blood-curdling death scream - the awful impact of what we witness amplified by the matter-of-fact way in which it is shot.

Then there is the film's most frightening sequence, in which the archetypal mad scientist goes completely berserk and releases an army of zombie psychopaths from their caged cells, howling at them to kill Fantômas - it is so chillingly reminiscent of Universal's horror classics of the 1930s.  Then there is Fantômas himself, appearing in two guises, first as the impostor Bréval, played with terrifying gusto by Aimé Clariond, and then as the demonic arch-criminal himself, with Maurice Teynac positively revelling in the role.  Here we have two contrasting faces of pure evil - the disillusioned surgeon driven to an insane plan of revenge, becoming increasingly unhinged as the film progresses, and the calculating, pathologically sadistic crime lord whose sole aim in life is to reap as much human misery as possible.

It is hard not to sympathise with Clariond's indignant scientist after his cruel rejection by Marcelle Chantal at the start of the film, but this sympathy is well and truly gone by the time he starts drilling holes in people's heads and begins building up a private collection of zombie murderers.  As the pukka Fantômas, Maurice Teynac has less of a physical presence than the scenery-chewing Clariond, but his resonant voice and manic laugh never fail to send a shiver down the spine, making his the only screen version of the character since Feuillade to have something of the superhuman quality of the Allain and Souvestre creation.

Teynac is arguably the most accomplished screen actor to have taken on the role of Fantômas.  Prior to this, he had distinguished himself in a raft of prestigious dramas that included Sacha Guitry's Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (1942) and Le Comédien (1948); subsequently, he would famously play Sherlock Holmes for a French radio series in the late 1950s.  Two strong central villains calls for an equally strong pair of crime-fighting heroes, and here the film doesn't disappointment, with Alexandre Rignault skilfully reprising the role of Juve that he had recently played in Sacha's 1947 Fantômas film, and Yves Furet assuming the role of Fandor with a classic Boy's Own adventure lust and an evident enthusiasm for daring action stunts.

Fantômas contre Fantômas was one of director Robert Vernay's most successful forays into mainstream genre cinema.  After starting out as an assistant to Julien Duvivier on such classics as Maria Chapdelaine (1934) and La Bandera (1935), he went on to direct a series of impressive literary adaptations in the early-to-mid 1940s that included Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1943) and Le Père Goriot (1945).  By the late '40s. Vernay was past his prime, and found himself dealing with more mundane fare, such as the lacklustre Fernandel comedy Émile l'Africain (1948).

With his one and only Fantômas offering, Vernay shows himself to be surprisingly adept as an action-thriller director.  His flair for strong visuals (so much in evidence in his early work) is apparent in every reel of Fantômas contre Fantômas, his inspired use of noir-like lighting and camerawork bringing a creepy lurking menace and unbearable tension to some of the film's more memorably frightening sequences. Whilst it may not be quite in the same league of Feuillade's unsurpassed Fantômas series, Vernay's surprisingly nasty little shocker comes a close second and must surely rate as one of the most disturbing films to have been made in France in the 1940s.  It is certainly the one that is most brazenly impacted by the horrors of the Nazi holocaust.

Film Synopsis

Brutally rejected by his one true love Irène de Charras, the renowned surgeon François de Bréval commits suicide by crashing his car into a tree at high speed.  Not long afterwards, Paris becomes the victim of a terrifying crime wave.  Huge sums of money are extorted from various businesses across the capital and several brutal killings are reported in the newspapers.  The public can draw only one conclusion: this is the work of the feared master-criminal Fantômas!

Thought to have been killed after his last criminal exploit, the arch-fiend appears to be back in business, using some form of trepan surgery to convert ordinary people into deadly killing machines.  As the police investigation stalls, Inspector Juve is forced to ally himself with the city's black marketeers in a bold plan to thwart his cunning adversary.  With the help of the adventure-loving journalist Fandor, Juve uncovers a secret laboratory beneath a sprawling country chateau.  It is here that the brain operations are being performed - by none other than Bréval himself!  It seems that the surgeon is still very much alive.  Having faked his own death, he is now committed to a campaign of revenge to make up for the slights he has suffered in his professional and personal life.

Juve is not the only one to have an interest in Bréval's criminal activities.  The real Fantômas is still at large, furious that someone has had the audacity to carry out criminal acts under his name.  Rather than kill the surgeon, however, he decides to exploit his talents for his own evil ends.  Bréval has no choice put to create an army of homicidal zombies which Fantômas will unleash on Paris if the French government does not agree to his terms.  Time is fast running out for Juve and Fandor if they are to thwart France's public enemy number one and prevent a massacre in the French capital...