The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower (1928) User Reviews

The Evolution of the Thriller

[boblipton · 6/10 · 28 November 2016]

It's not a particularly Duvivier-like piece. Without going into detail about the plot, it's easiest to understand it in the context of the growth of the thriller in this era, from writers like Buchan to Oppenheimer to Greene and film makers like Feuillade and Lang, to Hitchcock. It has the typically melodramatic, rococo menace of the earlier workers, including an evil organization (in the Dutch titles and their English translation, "The Knights of the Ku-Klux-Eiffel" in black-and-white robes with pointy hoods), combined with a little mustachioed man (Tramel, who prospered more in sound films, taking the lead in the sound version of Crainquebill), ending in the big set-piece ending atop the Eiffel Tower, reminding me most strongly of the ending of The Naked City.

I trust that my hitting these points shows its relationship to other, better-known thrillers. It is on the issue of pacing that it falls down. There are numerous chase sequences, most of which seem to run interminably. It is only with the final chase atop the Eiffel Tower that it becomes clear that these other chases are shot and timed to that final chase, with the deliberate pace of the cog railroad on the tower and the tiring, slowing clambering of the villain up the girders. The structure of the plot is not advancement or retreat, it is recapitulation, like THE BIRDS, or even THE EVIL DEAD. By the end, even the beautifully shot final confrontation was mildly wearisome, and the ending seems more like a baseball game called on account of rain, rather than a winning run.

Duvivier would return to these issues, with better writing (Simenon) and a structure that more effectively showed the inevitability of fate. By the time he was working with Jean Gabin, he had a protagonist who knew his fate and struggled in vain against it. Tramel is more a comedy character stuck in a serious world, the inverse of Buster Keaton. He triumphs because that's the way these things work out, not through any virtue of his own, not even stubbornness. By the time the final chase ends with the villain losing his grasp of the girders like Norman Lloyd's fraying coat, it's a conclusion like the Great War: exhaustion.

Perhaps this was the point of the movie. If so, the characters seem blithely unaware of it. It may be valid, but in a world of unending recapitulation, it will all have to be done again later.

Back to Feuillade

[dbdumonteil · 11 August 2009]

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.

Little chance you'll ever catch this film but, if you are so fortunate, make sure to bring the whole family!

[seldom- · 10/10 · 6 February 2006]

This incredibly funny film, considered almost lost, was furnished with a wonderful new score by Fay Lovsky in April 2005 and shown once in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam—location of the sole remaining copy. Despite being virtually unknown, tickets sold-out that night.

Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel deserves a world tour. Even better: a Duvivier retrospective (Sounds by Lovsky!). The action is truly of a rare-seen kind.

Considering the equipment that had to be carried in those days, it is quite a marvel how advanced this thing is shot. Any available story is rendered inferior to the slapstick-packed action which includes a downhill chase by plane, vertical fighting in the iron skeleton of the Eiffel tower—apparently without safety gear involved—, combined with brilliant characters—later eagerly copied; e.g. George Remi, author the Tintin books.

Achillis Saturnin, making a meagre living as one half of the "Siamese twins", a ridiculous circus act, inherits a dazzling sum of 159 million francs, only to have his double steal it behind his back. The impostor installs himself in the mansion of the deceased, adjusting smoothly to an overdone servant-keeping-class kind of lifestyle.

But more rivals lie in wait; a spooky sect under the name of Ku-Klux-Eiffel, known for jamming French broadcasts with coded messages transmitted from the Eiffel tower, comically terrorize the impostor down to his nightmares. Driven to panic, the man goes into hiding in Paris, where he discovers that Achillis, Silvanie and her younger brother, have lost their job at the circus and are dependent on alms.

Afraid to return to the mansion himself, he sends Achillis to fill in his place in promise of 500.000 francs. Achillis agrees. While living it up, throwing parties and such, he is kidnapped by the Knights of Ku-Klux-Eiffel who take him to their castle high up the mountains. Taking it for a prank at first, Achillis only manages to escape at the very last moment. Along the way he gets hold of the key to the Ku-Klux-Eiffel code and one of their receiving devices. Able, thus, to intercept their messages he gains in to exposing the entire sect.

It takes another kidnap and escape through a labyrinth, the unmasking of a human chameleon, getting passed the mysterious Li-Ho-Ha (a creepy, apparently Chinese-or so adviser of the sect's leader), and the notorious Eiffel-tower-climb to bring this marvelous film to a happy end.

Towering Achievement

[writers_reign · 9/10 · 26 August 2007]

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.