To be able to see this rare gem at all is fortuitous; to be able to see it in time for it to be my 1,000th review for IMDb is a new definition of serendipity and once again I am deeply indebted to the guy in Norway who has supplied me with so many great French movies. Well over my 1,000 reviews are French movies and many of those were the work of Julien Duvivier who is still, alas, awaiting his rightful recognition as one of the truly Great French film makers whose career began in the Silent Era and ended abruptly in the 1960s. This gem dates from 1927 and as I watched it I seriously thought that the screenplay must be the work of Harry Stephen Keeler, an almost forgotten American novelist whose surreal off-the-wall plots were like those of no other writer and had titles like The Man With The Magic Eardrums, The Skull Of The Waltzing Clown etc. Here we have a heady brew indeed; faux Siamese Twins, one of whom is cheated out of an inheritance by his double, a bizarre sect known as Ku-Klux-Eiffel who go around in Black hoods as opposed to the White hoods of the original Ku-Klux Klan, and exist apparently to jam French radio broadcasts by means of a secret code. When the impostor is installed in his château the sect - who are 'advised' by someone glorying in the name Li-Ho-Ha - 'haunt' him until he leaves and prevails upon the real heir, Achillis Saturnin, to take his place in return for 500,000 francs. Still to come is a bizarre fight on the Eiffel Tower itself before the obligatory happy ending. Duvivier employs what for the time was a very fluid camera cutting from Master Shot to Close Up to Cutaway adroitly and injecting the free-wheeling plot with consummate pacing. A soundtrack of sorts supplements the title cards from time to time with FX such as a plane buzzing the protagonists and music and song elsewhere. This is a film that cries out for reissue and rediscovery and is a must-see for Duvivier buffs and admirers of French cinema in general.
Review of The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower
