Landru, der Blaubart von Paris

NO GOOD BUT INTERESTING

No good but interesting and very peculiar film about the French serial killer Landru who was beheaded on February 25th 1922. This 1922 film can thus be seen as an illustration to all the newspaper reports. As far as I can judge all events in the film are true to the real life events with the exception of: 1) changing the name of the character into Dupont - why that was is not clear, 2) Dupont (Landru) at long last admitting his guilt, while the real Landru never admitted this.

The film can also be seen as an Aufklärungsfilm. It starts and ends with a warning of a demon-like man to all the watching ladies to be on guard and not to get involved too easily with male strangers; this is on the verge of blaming the 300 murdered women as well for what has happened.  As in how much sensation played a part in making this film, is after 77 years hard to tell; the murder are off-screen, but I can imagine the excitement of the then audience when the smoke coming from the notorious stove and the tools Landru used to chop up his victims are shown.

The film itself is tedious and (even with its 81 minutes) overlong: after the viewer has seen 2 women disappear one knows the score, but another 3 have to be sit out before Landru is finally arrested and brought to trial. The direction and cast are so-so, while editing and continuity are extremely careless. There is an abundance of inter titles, some of them nicely decorated with little drawings. Not a large enough studio for the court room scenes was available: these scenes obviously are shot in open air (sun light, waving hair etc.), a quite poor production value already for 1922 and probably a sign that Austrian cinema was still underdeveloped.

Not one member of the cast and crew is credited.

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Landru, der Blaubart von Paris

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