Helmut Berger, who passed away a few days ago, has made history in cinema, becoming Luchino Visconti's favourite actor. This period, and in particular the role of Ludwig in The Twilight of the Gods, opposite Romy Schneider, marked the Austrian actor so much that we ended up forgetting that he toured with other directors, starting with Claude Chabrol.
In 1980, the one that some still call "the most beautiful man in the world" embodied Fantômas, in a mini-series of four episodes that Madelen invites you to discover or rediscover. They are called The Magic Scaffold, The Devil's Embrace, The Death That Kills and The Ghost Streetcar. The adaptation is very different from the one that brought together Louis de Funès and Jean Marais, for three films, in the early 1960s.
" READ ALSO Helmut Berger, died at 78 years of such a beautiful monster of the cinema
The director chose to remain resolutely faithful to some of the 32 novels written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain between 1911 and 1913. He mixes realism and fantasy in the fight between the man nicknamed "the monster with the cape and top hat" and Inspector Juve, played by Jacques Dufilho. Thus, in the first episode, he finds himself aboard a train, where he watches over the Marquise de Langrune, played by Hélène Duc. She must go to Paris, in order to hit the jackpot she has just won in the lottery. It will never arrive at the station. She dies strangled? How? A mystery that the young Fandor, played by Pierre Malet, upset by the death of his aunt, decides to try to solve by helping Commissioner Juve find the culprit.
Bloody images
Fabrice Luchini, then a debutant, Jean-Pierre Coffe, still an actor, and Pierre Douglas, a young chansonnier, appear in the credits of a Franco-German co-production, which allowed Claude Chabrol to reconcile with the small screen. He had already shot a dozen intimate TV movies, but refused much more ambitious projects, starting with soap operas, criticizing, in particular, the lack of resources granted to creators. "If I said that, it's because in my eyes, television had the look of a beautiful woman who is loved and blamed for dressing badly," he responds to critics who are surprised by his change of attitude. He adds that if he embarked on this adventure, it is because it was international, but also out of love for a character that has fascinated him since his young years.
Thus, with the complicity of Juan-Luis Bunuel, Luis' son, he agreed to build the scripts and the staging, according to the budgets that had been allocated to him. He thus gave up, not without regret, a scene showing the explosion of a boat with 250 people throwing themselves into the sea. On the other hand, he made it his duty, and even a pleasure, to shoot some particularly bloody images. There is no shortage of corpses and the death of two young girls in one episode is particularly spectacular. Which, for a broadcast on Saturday evening on Antenne 2, represented a real risk. True to his personality, Chabrol did not hesitate to take it and assume it. The public was there, and the bet was won. In his relationship with television, the genius of evil paradoxically did Claude Chabrol a lot of good.