Nuits rouges (1974)

Director:

Georges Franju

Writer:

Jacques Champreux (writer)

Release Date:

May 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Mystery

Plot:

Shadowman, a thief whose head is covered by a red mask, and his cat-suited assistant, try to find the...

Plot Keywords:

Mask

Cast

Gayle Hunnicutt	...	La femme
Jacques Champreux	...	L'homme sans visage
Josephine Chaplin	...	Martine Leduc
Ugo Pagliai	...	Paul de Borrego
Gert Fröbe	...	Le commissaire Sorbier (as Gert Froebe)
Patrick Préjean	...	Séraphin Beauminon
Raymond Bussières	...	L'acheteur
Clément Harari	...	Le docteur Dutreuil
Henry Soskin	...	Le professeur Pétri
Yvon Sarray	...	Albert (as Annet Yvon Sarray)
Pierre Collet	...	Le Grand Maître des Templiers
Enzo Fisichella	...	Insp. Péclet
Roberto Bruni	...	Maxime de Borrego
Gérard Croce	...	La Futaille
Jean Saudray	...	Le Sacristain

Also Known As:

L'homme sans visage (France) (informal alternative title)
Shadowman

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:PG

Company:

New Line Cinema

Back to Feuillade

After several uneven productions -including a Zola adaptation : "la Faute de l'Abbé Mouret"- ,Georges Franju (whose best works remain his shorts and his two first feature-films "La Tete Contre les Murs" and "les Yeux sans Visage" plus maybe "Therese Desqueyroux" )said goodbye to cinema with a return to Feuillade .A first homage was released in 1963 with his remake of "Judex" which was not bad.

"Les Nuits Rouges" is more "Judex" ,but the problem lies in the fact that it's a digest of a TV miniseries.The far-fetched plot (and I mean far-fetched) is also handicapped by amateurish acting (an international cast including Gert "Goldfinger" Froebe as a Police Inspector and poor acting by Chaplin,Champreux and Préjean.Gayle Hunnicutt ,cast as a seventies Musidora,complete with mask and tights ,is pretty photogenic on the roofs but that's all we can say of her performance.The Shadowman is none other than Fantomas,Souvestre-Allain's hero whose adventures were also transferred to the screen by Feuillade.

Actually,those adventures could have succeeded well in Old Paris,the Paris from the beginning of the XX th century,in the Fortifications and in the Bas-Fonds .In Paris 1974,they seem obsolete,uninteresting and dull.Enough is enough.