Duvivier's huge body of work ,as far as the silent movies are concerned,is not well known:"Poil De Carotte" ,"Au Bonheur Des Dames " and that's it.The only available copy of " Le Mystere De La Tour Eiffel " is Dutch ,and ,although it's got a running time of two hours +,a big hunk is missing,considering the script which features a chamber of tortures where the hero is imprisoned notably.
The story is thoroughly implausible ,worthy of Feuillade's extravaganzas in the precedent decade ;even Souvestre and Allain who wrote "Fantomas" would not write such a far-fetched plot ,absolutely impossible to tell ,and anyway my good friend Writer's Reign already wrote an adequate summary.Let's note however that that "La Compagnie De L'Antenne" in the FRench synopsis has become Ku -Klux -Eiffel (sic),which makes sense ,for these sinister persons are dressed like the maleficent American KKK;that the young boy who plays Reginald ,Jimmy Gaillard ,would become an actor when he grew up (notably in "Gringalet" or "L'Amant De Borneo" );that the fortress of Roche Noire" has a strange architecture inside and that it's got a strange window:when you try to open it,bars appear.The (Klu- Klu-Eiffels) shadow graph is a trick Duvivier would use again much later in one scene of "L'Affaire Maurizius"(1954)
The best of what remains of the original work is the final scenes ,on the Eiffel Tower ,where Duvivier already showed he would be one of the greatest French directors of all time.He filmed the famous tower in a way that is almost frightening: the steel frames ,the cables ,everything creates a new world where men are like spiders on a giant web ,while the crowd looks like ants on the Champ De Mars.
The story is thoroughly implausible ,worthy of Feuillade's extravaganzas in the precedent decade ;even Souvestre and Allain who wrote "Fantomas" would not write such a far-fetched plot ,absolutely impossible to tell ,and anyway my good friend Writer's Reign already wrote an adequate summary.Let's note however that that "La Compagnie De L'Antenne" in the FRench synopsis has become Ku -Klux -Eiffel (sic),which makes sense ,for these sinister persons are dressed like the maleficent American KKK;that the young boy who plays Reginald ,Jimmy Gaillard ,would become an actor when he grew up (notably in "Gringalet" or "L'Amant De Borneo" );that the fortress of Roche Noire" has a strange architecture inside and that it's got a strange window:when you try to open it,bars appear.The (Klu- Klu-Eiffels) shadow graph is a trick Duvivier would use again much later in one scene of "L'Affaire Maurizius"(1954)
The best of what remains of the original work is the final scenes ,on the Eiffel Tower ,where Duvivier already showed he would be one of the greatest French directors of all time.He filmed the famous tower in a way that is almost frightening: the steel frames ,the cables ,everything creates a new world where men are like spiders on a giant web ,while the crowd looks like ants on the Champ De Mars.