Les Vampires (1915)

[Johann]

Saturday night was a huge night of cinema at the Ontario Cinematheque. Episodes 5-8 were screened and it ran 4 hours.

The theatre staff apologized to me when I asked about the running time at the ticket counter as we filed out (the only one who asked it seemed, even though everyone knew that that was one long screening). There was a misprint in the guide about how long the running time was. Episodes 5-8 total almost 240 minutes.
I felt sorry for poor Mr. O'Meara, who played a divine upright piano for the whole 4 hours, without faltering once in tempo or energy. Proud of what he did. We all clapped at the end, more out of respect and appreciation for him than the film itself.
People went up to him after the screening to say thanks.

I'm just going to let fly with the events that I can remember in this mammoth screening:

Episode 5: L'Evasion du Mort

- the thief Moreno is brought in before the authorities in handuffs, and he won't be taken alive. He takes a cyanide tablet and the authorities declare him dead. But is he? His body is taken to a cell overnight. Then he wakes up when a guard comes into his cell to check on him. Like Batman, he takes the guard out and wears his uniform to escape- "l' evasion du mort", get it?

Then we see Mazamette trying to find out how he can duplicate a lock's key pattern with silly putty. He takes the mold and makes a key, which he hilariously makes obvious to the camera. Then Phillipe is captured by the Vampires! He's pulled from a 3rd story window with a huge noose! (an obviously stuffed dummy- the audience laughed at that- how could you not- it was painfully obvious that it was a dummy) Then Moreno rents cop uniforms for his accomplices. Up to this point we've been led to believe that Le Baron de Montaignes was "the Grand Vampire" but soon we'll see that he's not.
Next is a Parisian salon, filled with the upper crust toasting the night, who get gassed with a "perfume" and then get robbed wholesale of their jewels by the Vampire gang. I noticed what looked like a bust of Alexander the Great on one of the mantles during this sequence.

Episode 6: Les Yeux au Fascinent

The maid Laure is hypnotized by the thief Moreno.
Then there's a "film within a film"? in 1915? Visionary! called "L'assassination de Notaire", brief but very cool.
Here's my notes, with no other explanations.
You see it and add your two cents please.
Hotel Fontainbleau. Mr. and Mrs. Horatio Werner.
Horses. Bicycles. on location.
Phillipe and Mazamette climb some rock faces and find a locked box hidden in them. They take it back to their homebase and unlock it- money!!!!!!
Viscount de Kerlor. Millionaire Geo Baldwin.
Newspapers. Business card shots. Raphael Norton.
Smoking. Pipe? Cigar? tea time!
A Napoleonic flashback sequence was very interesting to me.
Napoleon's Marshal Murat tangles with a raging bull (?)
Vicomte guy? Irma finds a map! To the tresor!
Irma's an imposter!
Grand Veneur Hotel.
La Comte de Kerlor. a revolver!
Mr. Metadier is assassinated.
Irma shoots, Irma kills!
Sumptuous apartment. The journalists are here for an interview!
Virtue is always rewarded.



A little chaotic, this serial...