Le Faux magistrat (1914)
Directed by Louis Feuillade

Film Review

Le Faux Magistrat is the fifth and final instalment in Louis Feuillade's popular and hugely influential Fantômas thriller series. By far the weakest entry in the series, Le Faux Magistrat lacks the pace and artistry of the preceding episodes and is a comparatively mundane affair - you sense that Feuillade has grown tired with the subject and is keen to move on to pastures new. The following year, undeterred by the privations of World War I, he'd be busy with his next crime series, Les Vampires (1915).

This sense of apathy is immediately apparent both in the lacklustre plot, which feels like reheated left-overs, and the diminished status of the main characters.  The master crook Fantômas has lost his capacity to chill and is just another run-of-the-mill criminal, whilst his arch-enemy Juve is reduced to the level of a raving imbecile (not too far removed from Louis de Funès's portrayal in the 1964 remake).  Even the heroic Fandor, the original action hero, gets very little to do.

There are one or two striking set pieces (the best being the gruesome bell-ringing sequence, where blood and jewels rain down on a Church congregation), but overall this fifth Fantômas outing offers nothing new and it is painfully obvious that the series has run its course. It doesn't help that the surviving print is of poor quality, with many important scenes missing.

Film Synopsis

With their leader, the criminal mastermind Fantômas, securely incarcerated in a Belgium prison, two crooks named Paulet and Ribonard decide to target the Marquis de Tergall.  Facing financial ruin, the Marquis has no option but to sell his wife's valuable jewels, but both the jewellery and the money from the sale are stolen by Fantômas's cunning criminal associates.  Inspector Juve hasn't given up his hope of seeing his devious archenemy brought to justice in France, so he hatches a plan to allow Fantômas to escape from prison so that he can be picked up later.

Juve's scheme goes badly wrong, with the result that the out-manoeuvred police inspector is imprisoned and Fantômas is at liberty to resume his nefarious career.  Assuming the disguise of a respectable magistrate, the notorious king of crime returns to France and immediately sets about trying to extort a fortune from the unfortunate widow of the Marquis de Tergall.  The ever-resourceful journalist Fandor sees through the disguise, but Fantômas isn't defeated yet.  He still has one trick left up his sleeve...