Tih-Minh

Tih-Minh, a serial in twelve parts and a prologue, will be shown over four Sundays in November, two to three episodes per evening. Prologue 1 Philter of Oblivion (Le Philtre d'oubli) 2 Drama in the Night (Drame dans la nuit) 3 Mysteries of the Villa Circé (Mystères de la Villa Circé) 4 The Man in the Trunk (L'Homme dans la malle) 5 In the Madhouse (Chez les fous) 6 Night Birds (Oiseaux de nuit) 7 The Evocation (L'Evocation) 8 Under Sail (Sous le voile) 9 The Saving Branch (La Branche de salut) 10 Wednesday the 13th (Mercredi 13) 11 Document 29 (Le Document 29) 12 Justice (Justice) Jon Mirsalis on Piano. In Judex, Louis Feuillade tipped his hat to his critics by having a righteous protagonist, but after the war he returned to his element-the criminal element-with a touch of international intrigue inspired by the war. The Vampire Gang thrive under a new name whose initials G.S.E. mean God Strike England. A French explorer (Judex's René Cresté) and his entourage are in search of a secret document that will lead them to an immense war treasure. In their way stand a host of inimitably Feuilladian villains in their bizarre villa with its "living dead." "In Tih-Minh Feuillade was able to find, without copying, the great tradition of Les Vampires and to multiply its sense of terror and anxiety tenfold. From suburban perils he moved to the poisons of Paradise: the sun of the Riviera chases away the Paris greyness but its wave of light erases the shadows, rendering good and evil indistinguishable. This time, not a journalist-detective but explorers, diplomats, doctors; no Apaches, but Hindu princes, marquesses. No more revolvers, but turbans, monocles, and diamonds. In this atmosphere, where everything leans toward sweetness, espionage reigns; roses hide microphones. In the Villa Circé's cellars crazy women cry, scream and dance, while a little further away, the villa Bon Repos is an authentic insane asylum in which sane people are interned. In the center of the Vampires' evil web is their victim: Tih-Minh, an (Indochinese princess) who is to be punished for the death of Irma Vep....Among the dreamlike images, the most beautiful one, which gives the film a Proustian resonance and impregnates it with the cruelty of absence, is a fixed image, the portrait of the missing Tih-Minh, carried by a mysterious hand and on which has been written in ink the date and a laconic word, heavy with threat and hope: 'Alive.'"-F. Lacassin, Louis Feuillade, 1964

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