La Maison du mystère (English: The House of Mystery) is a French silent serial film directed by Alexandre Volkoff for the Albatros film company. It was made during 1921 and 1922 and was first shown in 1923. It was co-written by and starred Ivan Mosjoukine.
Plot
Julien Villandrit is the owner of the estate of Les Basses-Bruyères and its textile factory, where the manager is his childhood friend Corradin. Julien marries his neighbour Régine, unaware that Corradin also loves her. Julien is sent to gaol for a murder actually committed by Corradin. The only witness to the truth is the woodsman Rudeberg and Corradin buys his silence by paying for the education of his son Pascal. Julien's struggle to clear his name and to rescue Régine and their daughter Christiane from Corradin's scheming extends over many years and faces many setbacks.
In 1921 the Russian émigré producer Joseph N. Ermolieff undertook three film serials through his company Ermolieff-Cinéma, including one based on La Maison du mystère by the novelist Jules Mary. Filming began in the summer of 1921 but was then interrupted for six months when its star, Ivan Mosjoukine, contracted typhoid fever. When production resumed in 1922, it was under the aegis of Films Albatros, the successor to Ermolieff's company. The first episode was released in France on 23 March 1923 with its remaining nine episodes appearing at weekly intervals.[2]
The titles of the ten parts of the serial were: Episode 1: L'Ami félon. Episode 2: Le Secret de l'étang. Episode 3: L'Ambition au service de la haine. Episode 4: L'Implacable Verdict. Episode 5: Le Pont vivant. Episode 6: La Voix du sang. Episode 7: Les Caprices du destin. Episode 8: Champ clos. Episode 9: Les Angoisses de Corradin. Episode 10: Le Triomphe de l'amour.[3]
Studio scenes were filmed in Montreuil and some location shooting was carried out in Nice and Cannes.[4] A number of the cast and the technicians were Russians who had moved to France after the Russian Revolution. The story allowed Ivan Mosjoukine to appear in numerous disguises in the course of the film and to display the range of his acting.[5]
Reception
The response to the serial's release was positive: "Its success was immediate and phenomenal. Critics who had previously denounced the serial as artless, lowbrow fare were almost fulsome in their praise of the film's stylish upgrading of melodramatic clichés, sheer pictorial elegance, and narrative imagination, not to mention the utter credibility of the performances. For Mosjoukine it was the ultimate consecration after four succès d'estime, and once again served as a showcase for his multifarious talent. But the film also opened doors for Charles Vanel ... and the astonishing Nicolas Koline..."[2]
One critic in 1923 admitted that his longstanding disdain for the serial film had been overturned by this example of the form: "It is no longer a case of a film made of preposterous situations, of astonishing escapades, of heroines ten times slain and ten times resurrected, but, on the contrary, of a very lucid adaptation of Jules Mary's novel. A grasp of rhythm, of weight, of truth, and beautiful photography full of clever discoveries are the mark of M. Volkoff's direction...."[6]
The film was re-released as a feature film in 1929 (with a running time of 159 minutes).[2]
The 1929 feature version of the film was restored in 1985 for the Cinémathèque française by Renée Lichtig, and she completed a restoration of the serial version with tinting in 1992.[2][4] A 3-disk DVD edition of the serial was issued in the USA by Flicker Alley in 2015.[7]
^Richard Abel. French cinema: the first wave 1915-1929. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. p.77.
^'L'Habitué du vendredi', in Cinémagazine, 23 mars 1923, p.512: "Il ne s’agit plus là de faire du métrage de situations abracadabrantes, d’aventures extraordinaires, d’héroïnes dix fois tuées et dix fois ressuscitées, mais au contraire d’une adaptation très claire du roman de Jules Mary. Une science du rythme, de l’intensité, de la vérité, une très belle photographie où abondent d’ingénieuses trouvailles caractérisent la réalisation de M. Volkoff ...."
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