A ten-part serial that took eight hours to watch with breaks, this thing defies not just summary but reliable recall: describing it is like trying to describe a year in my life. Chaotic, unpredictable, upside down, with endless sneaky tricks that defy our conception of 'movie' magic because they mainly involve Cirque-type human machines doing things that couldn't have been faked so convincingly at this date. I mean, you can see the splice whenever a character turns on the light, so when the bitchy criminal mastermind Irma Vep gets wrapped up in rope, then rolls down the side of a four-story building like a human yo-yo, you know you're watching history in the making. What's more, and redemptively, the stupid detectives are REALLY stupid, including this outrageous Italian stereotype who keeps nyuk-ing straight into the camera. There's a wild chase-fight scene on a moving train, a gas attack on a large high-society do, a kid accidentally shooting his father in the nose, and God knows what else. This dumbfoundingly imaginative, yet consistently goofy and crowd-pleasing movie could only have happened in a medium whose limits had not yet been properly defined - in fact you can see the definition happening on screen. When I grow up I want to be Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinematheque Francais, who rescued the world's only print of this film from the curb on garbage day. Hooray!
