When Franju directed Judex<\/em>, which was released in France 60 years ago, he was five features into a career in film that stretched back to the mid-\u201930s, when he co-directed a silent short (1934\u2019s Le m\u00e9tro<\/em>) with Henri Langlois and co-founded the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise, also with Langlois. In the interest of preserving France\u2019s film heritage, they collected the crime serials of Louis Feuillade, whose Fant\u00f4mas<\/a> films left a deep impression on Franju. Later, when he was denied the opportunity to remake them (losing out to Andr\u00e9 Hunebelle, who took the series far afield from where Franju would have), he accepted the consolation prize of Feuillade\u2019s 1916 serial Judex<\/em>, the follow-up to Les Vampires<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Its adaptation was undertaken by Jacques Champreux (Feuillade’s grandson) and Francis Lacassin, who boiled the twelve-chapter story down to its essence while playing up the outr\u00e9 elements that appealed to their director\u2019s sensibilities. The result can be confusing for first-time viewers; it skips from one plot point to the next without much in the way of connective tissue, and introduces characters only to forget about them for long stretches. But Franju\u2019s Judex<\/em> casts a spell over anyone willing to forgo strict narrative coherence in pursuit of poetic beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn <\/strong>Judex<\/em><\/strong>, the setting and irreal atmosphere have just one purpose: to make the improbable story believable. To make the improbable realistic.\u201d \u2013Georges Franju<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Franju took pains to treat the story\u2019s fantastic elements as matter-of-factly as possible, his casting is key. For Judex, the director chose professional magician Channing Pollock, who could not only carry off the character\u2019s signature hat and cape, but also perform the dove trick without the need for cuts or other camera trickery. As the villainous Diana Monti, he cast Francine Berg\u00e9, a young actress who effortlessly exuded the pure evil required for the role and looked as much at ease in a pilfered nun\u2019s habit as a black body stocking with a dagger attached to her thigh. Franju\u2019s ace in the hole, however, was Edith Scob (so haunting as Christiane in 1960\u2019s Eyes Without a Face<\/em>) as Jacqueline, the meekly innocent daughter of Favraux, a corrupt banker targeted by Judex, who seeks redress for the many victims of his unscrupulous business practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a way of paying tribute to the crime serials that inspired them, Franju, Champreux and Lacassin set their film in the same time period (at one point, a character is seen reading from a Fant\u00f4mas novel published in 1913) and employed silent film techniques like iris effects and ornate intertitles. They even include a stunt straight out of Les Vampires<\/em>, when Judex scales a building where Diana and her accomplice\/lover are holed up, and is followed in short order by four of his black-hooded assistants because like magicians, costumed avengers sometimes need backup. This is part of what makes Judex<\/em> stand out in Franju\u2019s oeuvre. It would be easy enough to make Judex a nigh-invincible hero. By exposing the chinks in his armor and emphasizing the extent to which chance plays in how things turn out, Franju and his collaborators make plain the happy ending for Jacqueline and Judex is as much a quirk of fate as it is a reflection of their moral rectitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its closing moments, Judex<\/em> is dedicated \u201cin homage to Louis Feuillade,\u201d but Franju hadn\u2019t gotten his hero out of his system; one decade later he teamed back up with Champreux to make the eight-part television serial L’homme sans visage<\/em>, about a masked, Fant\u00f4mas-like villain and his monomaniacal search for the legendary treasure of the Knights Templar. This also saw the light of day as a heavily truncated feature called Nuits rouges<\/em> (literally, \u201cred nights\u201d) and was re-titled Shadowman<\/em> when New Line released it in the U.S. No matter what name it goes by, though, it\u2019s the perfect complement to Judex<\/em>. Should Criterion consider adding another Franju film to its Collection, it need look no further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Judex\u201d can be found righting wrongs in its full Criterion Edition on the <\/em>Criterion Channel<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/judex2-1024x576.jpg\")
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