Disappeared a few days ago, Helmut Berger entered the history of cinema, becoming Luchino Visconti’s favorite 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 worked with other directors, start with Claude Chabrol.
In 1980, the one that some still call “the most handsome man in the world” played 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 Killing Death and The Phantom Tramway. The adaptation is very different from that which brought together Louis de Funès and Jean Marais, the time of three films, at the beginning of the 1960s.
The director has chosen 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 cape and top hat” to Inspector Juve, played by Jacques Dufilho. Thus, in the first episode, he finds himself on board a train, where he watches over the Marquise de Langrune, played by Hélène Duc. She has to go to Paris, in order to touch the jackpot she has just won in the lottery. She will never arrive at the station. She strangled to death? How ? A mystery that the young Fandor, played by Pierre Malet, upset by the death of his aunt, decides to try to elucidate by helping Commissioner Juve to find the culprit.
Fabrice Luchini, then a beginner, Jean-Pierre Coffe, still an actor, and Pierre Douglas, a young singer, appear in the credits of a Franco-German co-production, which allowed Claude Chabrol to reconcile with the small screen. He then already shot a dozen intimate TV movies, but refused much more ambitious projects, starting with soap operas, criticizing, in particular, the lack of means granted to the creators. “If I said that, it is because in my eyes, television had the look of a beautiful woman whom one loves and who is reproached for dressing badly”, answers- he to critics who are astonished at 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 who has fascinated him since his youth.
This is how, 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 renounced, 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 certain particularly bloody. The corpses are not lacking 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 dealings with television, the evil genius has paradoxically done a lot of good for Claude Chabrol.