Director: Louis Feuillade
Year: 1918
Runtime: 338 min (originally 418 min split into 12 films)
Source: A bootleg DVD version of what's on Youtube, but translated
This had the potential to be the most interesting of the three Feuillade serials on this list. Though it's not in his well-regarded trilogy of crime serials, it is clearly cut from the same cloth. We have a well-to-do civilian and his friends faced off against a shadowy cabal, although the bad guys turn out to be German spies this time around. Tih Minh aims to have one long continuous story arc, much more so than Fantomas or Les Vampires. The plot relies on a heady mixture of technology and psychology, and it involves amnesia potions, a great deal of hypnotism, and an extremely early mode of electronic surveillance involving wires strung through foliage. Of course it also woudn't be a Feuillade serial without a man hidden in a wicker basket at some point. (Seriously, the man loves wicker baskets.)
How successfully does all of this turn out? Well, I'm not qualified to judge, because what's available online is an unqualified disaster. There are at least a couple extant prints of Tih Minh floating around, but the one uploaded to YouTube and Archive.org edits and compresses all of the episodes into a single, rushed five-and-a-half-hour film. Not only that, but the print is so heavily degraded that the archive felt the need to apologize. Some of the more important inter-titles are illegible and it is often difficult to identify which characters are onscreen. All subtleties in the cinematography are lost.
Clearly, there is a better version being passed around the festival circuit, since Tih Minh has plenty of cinephile fans new and old. Jonathan Rosenbaum thinks it's Feuillade's best. From what I can tell, there are a few fascinating scenes, but from my extremely limited perspective it seemed rushed and largely improvised on the spot, with many of the more interesting early plot elements left out to dry.
I can only hope that this serial eventually gets the same wonderful Blu-ray version that Fantomas received a couple years ago. Until then, you would do well to avoid.
Year: 1918
Runtime: 338 min (originally 418 min split into 12 films)
Source: A bootleg DVD version of what's on Youtube, but translated
This had the potential to be the most interesting of the three Feuillade serials on this list. Though it's not in his well-regarded trilogy of crime serials, it is clearly cut from the same cloth. We have a well-to-do civilian and his friends faced off against a shadowy cabal, although the bad guys turn out to be German spies this time around. Tih Minh aims to have one long continuous story arc, much more so than Fantomas or Les Vampires. The plot relies on a heady mixture of technology and psychology, and it involves amnesia potions, a great deal of hypnotism, and an extremely early mode of electronic surveillance involving wires strung through foliage. Of course it also woudn't be a Feuillade serial without a man hidden in a wicker basket at some point. (Seriously, the man loves wicker baskets.)
How successfully does all of this turn out? Well, I'm not qualified to judge, because what's available online is an unqualified disaster. There are at least a couple extant prints of Tih Minh floating around, but the one uploaded to YouTube and Archive.org edits and compresses all of the episodes into a single, rushed five-and-a-half-hour film. Not only that, but the print is so heavily degraded that the archive felt the need to apologize. Some of the more important inter-titles are illegible and it is often difficult to identify which characters are onscreen. All subtleties in the cinematography are lost.
Clearly, there is a better version being passed around the festival circuit, since Tih Minh has plenty of cinephile fans new and old. Jonathan Rosenbaum thinks it's Feuillade's best. From what I can tell, there are a few fascinating scenes, but from my extremely limited perspective it seemed rushed and largely improvised on the spot, with many of the more interesting early plot elements left out to dry.
I can only hope that this serial eventually gets the same wonderful Blu-ray version that Fantomas received a couple years ago. Until then, you would do well to avoid.
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