The Brief Heyday of the Serial

 The Brief Heyday of the Serial

Serials
1)Today the serial is usually remembered as a trivial form of cinema,
    consisting largely of low-budget thrillers aimed at youthful matinee audiences
    from the 1930s to the 1950s.
2)Yet the serial served as the main attraction in many theaters during the 1910s.
3)Serial episodes can be seen as a kind of transitional form between the one-reel film
   and the feature.
4)Though some early serial episodes were quite short, others lasted forty-five minutes
  or more.
5)They were shown with other short films—newsreels, cartoons, comic or dramatic
    narratives—but they formed the core of the program.
6)Serials were usually action oriented, offering thrilling elements like master criminals,
   lost treasures, exotic locales, and daring rescues.

The true serial
1)carried a story line over all its episodes.
2)Typically, each episode ended at a high point, with the main characters in danger.
3)These cliffhangers (so called because characters often ended up suspended from cliffs or
   buildings) lured the spectator back for the next installment.

Serials
1)originated at almost the same time in the United States and France.
2)The earliest American serial was The Adventures of Kathlyn (1914),
3) made by the Selig company and starring Kathlyn Williams.
4) Its episodes, set in India, were self-contained, but there was also an overall plotline.
5)The same was true of The Perils of Pauline, made by Pathé in 1914.
6)This hugely successful serial made a star of Pearl White and inspired other
   firms to make similar films.
7)Williams and White established the pattern of the serial queen, a heroine (often
    described as plucky) who survives numerous outlandish plots against her life.  

By late 1915,
1)American serials were highly profitable and were technically on a par with feature films
   of the era.
2)Near the end of the first episode of The Perils of Pauline,
   the heroine shinnies down a rope from a balloon that has been set adrift by the villain.

The Perils of Pauline (Louis J. Gasnier, 1914)

Intertitles:
Why don't you request a photo of you alone in the basket?

Louis Feuillade

1)The greatest filmmaker associated with this form was Louis Feuillade.
2)This prolific Gaumont director made around eighty short films a year between 1907
   and 1913, working in various genres.

Fantômas 
1)A turning point in his career, however, was the “Fantômas” crime serial,
2)beginning in 1913 with Fantômas and continuing through 1914 with four additional
   feature-length episodes.
3)(Even then, however, he continued to direct comedies as well.)
4)The “Fantômas” serial adapted the popular writings of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel
    Allain, whose books have become classics.

5) Fantômas was the ultimate criminal, master of many disguises,
    who constantly eluded his determined rival, the detective Juve.
6) Feuillade filmed this crime story in the streets of Paris and in conventional studio sets,
    creating a bizarre juxtaposition of an everyday milieu and fantastic, nightmarish events.

Further Feuillade

 1)His subsequent thriller serials Les Vampires (1915), Judex (1916), and Tih Minh (1918)
     continued this style.
2) Feuillade was extremely popular with the general public, but he was also embraced by the
    Surrealists for the (perhaps unconscious) poetic quality of his work.
3)Feuillade’s casual, even comic, treatment of outrageous plot twists makes his films seem
   highly modern today.

 
The first episode of Fantômas ends as Juve sees a vision of the escaped Fantômas,
in his famous evening clothes and mask, tauntingly holding out his hands to be handcuffed.

Fantômas (Louis Feuillade, 1913)