Jumping from Episode No. 1 to Episodes Nos. 1777, 1778 and 1779 and having the rescuer-detective Justin Crécelle and his rescuee-girl Hélène Fortedoddy (played by someone called Kitty Hott, real name Philomène Liévin) at odd moments gaze incensed into each other’s eyes and cry “Rescued? – Rescued!”, Feyder pokes fun at serials à la Perils of Pauline. Naturally, the spectators of 1916 could enjoy the parody far better than we do today. Unnaturally, there are quite a few jokes in the film we enjoy much more than people did a hundred years ago; jokes with fuses which burned long and low and exploded decades later, like an art installation by Roman Signer. For example the cell phone joke. In the opening scene the hero has just invented the cell phone (“wireless vocaphone”); cell phone invention, fine, but when we see it function, the mind boggles – it rings in the detective’s trouser pocket during a film screening, disturbing everybody. Les Gaz mortels by Abel Gance happened to be next on the pile of reels when I viewed films in St. Cyr. Under the impact of Feyder’s film, the parodistic fun simply continued in the work of Gance – a film director who cannot be accused of having any sense of fun – and turned it into a readymade: same lab with scientist in the first scene, wonderfully worn plot (“Rescued? – Rescued!”) and no way to suspend disbelief. Two reels of the film are shown, combined with the first episodes of Le Pied qui étreint, as an instance of programmation automatique.

Mariann Lewinsky