JUDEX

In 1916, the year when Feuillade began to shoot Judex, France was in the middle of a crisis. Despite the reigning climate of Chauvinism, cultural life at Paris was in full swing. It was the era when the feuilleton spread, with its endless police stories, of which the Americans were the masters. The French industry tried to stay up in pace with the times. Pathé, Gaumont, and Eclair invested a good part of their budgets in the making of more and more captivating"series". After Gaumont triumphed with its Fantomas and Les Vampires, it proposed to Feuillade that he make a new series oriented to the exploration of a new terrain of the imagination. It was the turn of Judex. The operation was set up with care. Arthur Bernède, the competent feuilleton writer, was put in charge of writing the episodes that appeared weekly in the popular . In every episode the readers were invited to follow the film version soon to be released in the movies. For his part, Feuillade had the genial intuition to engage René Cresté, who, with his aristocratic profile, definitely ordained the success of the character. The wellrunning team made up of Feuillade, Klausse and Glattli synthesized the various elements and so gave life to an extraordinarily captivating series that left nothing to be desired from its American competitors.

Director: Louis Feuillade.
Plot: dal feuilleton di Arthur Bernède.
Screenplay: Arthur Bernède, L. Feuillade.
Director of photography: Léon Klausse, André Glattli.
Art director: RobertJules Garnier.
Cast: René Cresté (Henry de Trémeuse alias Judex), Edouard Mathé (Roger de Trémeuse), Louis Leubas (il banchiere Favraux), Ivette Andreyor (Jacqueline), Musidora (Diana Monti alias Marie Verdier), Jean Devalde (Robert Moralès), Georges Flateau (visconte de la Flochefontaine), Gaston Michel (Pierre Karjean), Olinda Mano (Jean), Juliette Clarens (Gisèle), Marcel Lévesque (Cocantin), BoutdeZan (il bambino liquirizia).
Production company: Gaumont
Film in 12 parti: L'Ombre Mystérieuse; L'expiation; la Meute Fantastique; le Secret de la Tombe; le Moulin Tragique; Le MÔme Réglisse; la Femme en Noir; les Souterrains du ChâteauRouge; Lorsque l'Enfant parut; Le Coeur de Jacqueline; L'Ondine; le Pardon d'Amour.

CONSERVAZIONE E RESTAURO / CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION

Copia conservata alla Cinémathèque Gaumont, che ha realizzato il restauro in collaborazione con la Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique e la Cinémathèque Française. Il lavoro di ricostruzione è stato condotto attraverso il confronto tra il negativo conservato dalla Gaumont e le copie della Cinémathèque Royale e della Cinémathèque Française (quest'ultima si rivelò provenire dal negativo Gaumont). La copia francese, pur presentando una buona qualit` fotografica, era priva di didascalie e inserti; la copia belga, di qualche minuto più corta, era completa di ben 385 didascalie e 35 inserti (pagine di giornali, biglietti da visita, telegrammi...) ma bilingue (francese e fiammingo). Si procedette così alla ristampa di nuove didascalie e nuovi inserti in lingua francese (per evitare il sovraccarico di testo nella singola didascalia, il numero fu portato da 385 a 415).