Zones of Anxiety: Movement, Musidora, and the Crime Serials of Louis Feuillade

204 Pages·2005·3.47 MB·English

by  Vicki Callahan

Zones of Anxiety
Contemporary Approaches
to Film and Television Series
A complete listing ofthe books in this series
can be found online at http://wsupress.wayne.edu
General Editor
Barry Keith Grant
Brock University
Advisory Editors
Patricia B.Erens
Dominican University
Lucy Fischer
University of Pittsburgh
Peter Lehman
Arizona State University
Caren J.Deming
University of Arizona
Robert J.Burgoyne
Wayne State University
Tom Gunning
University of Chicago
Anna McCarthy
New York University
Peter X.Feng
University of Delaware
Zones
of Anxiety
Movement, Musidora,
and the
Crime Serials of Louis Feuillade
Vicki Callahan
Wayne State University Press Detroit
© 2005 by Wayne State University Press,
Detroit,Michigan 48201.All rights are reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Callahan,Vicki.
Zones of anxiety :movement,Musidora,and the crime serials of Louis Feuillade /
Vicki Callahan.
p.cm.— (Contemporary approaches to film and television series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8143-2855-5 (pbk :alk.paper)
1. Feuillade,Louis,1873–1925—Criticism and interpretation. I.Title.II.Series.
PN1998.3.F48C35 2005
843’.912—dc22 2004013600
∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials,ANSI Z39.48-1984.
For the beloved Finnegan
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction:Writing a Feminist Poetic History
through the Cinema of Uncertainty 1
Louis Feuillade and the Cinema of Uncertainty:
1.
Scenes of Dislocation in Early Cinema/History 13
The FantômasSeries:Cinematic Vision
2.
and the Test of “Immediate Certainty” 45
3. “Qui? Quoi? Quand? Ou` ?”:Interrogating Woman
inLes vampiresandJudex 73
Stigma and Stigmata:The Cries and Cure
4.
of the Fantastic Narrative 117
Afterword:The Cinematic Legacy of Feuillade
and Musidora and a Different Way of Knowing 145
Notes 153
Works Cited 171
Index 181
vii
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Acknowledgments
An evening’s screening of Louis Feuillade’s Juve contre Fantômas set in
motion a rather remarkable sequence of events for me. The viewing
produced an essay for a course on French cinema,and in turn an enthu-
siastic suggestion from the professor, Judith Mayne, that I pursue
Feuillade’s films as a dissertation topic.Due to this generous advice,the
path to Feuillade and Musidora was opened to me,a path that brought
me in contact with a series of wonderful scholars and archivists and
even led to a number of long-lasting friendships.
The early stages of this project benefited enormously from
members of my UCLA dissertation committee,Steve Mamber,Lucia
Re, and Peter Wollen, and the suggestions of Noël Burch, Dudley
Andrew, and Richard Abel. Richard Abel has been a particularly
strong influence on this book in terms both of his own exemplary
scholarship and his ongoing and generous commentary from the very
beginning drafts of the research until now.
I am especially grateful to the Department of Film, Television,
and Digital Media at UCLA for the Charles Boyer Research Fellow-
ship and a travel grant, which provided essential support for extended
research work.In the final stages,this research was supported in part by
funds provided by the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. With
regard to primary research material, I have benefited from the aid of
numerous people.Kelley Conway deserves special thanks for introduc-
ing me to the French archives and for constantly helping with various
archival “mysteries,”or rather,procedures.Sylvia Walker supplied won-
derful oversight to my translations in the project’s early stages (with
later aid on this task from both Kelley Conway and James Williams).
Tami Williams, Bernard Bastide, and Annette Förster provided
not only helpful information on my research but also untold hours of
wonderful conversations about French early cinema. Emmanuelle
Toulet, Marianne Chanel, Jacques Champreux, Laurent Véray, and
Tom Gunning have been extremely helpful in the Feuillade–Musidora
quest.I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to the follow-
ix