"Fantomas in Moscow": Why the sequel to the mega-popular film was not filmed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 1966, a truly significant event took place in the USSR - our inexperienced audience was shown the film Fantômas by Henri Yunevel at the French Film Week. A little later, the film got into wide distribution through an exchange: the French audience saw "Anna Karenina" with Tatyana Samoilova in response, and we got three episodes of the comedy series. This is how the craze for a criminal character in a green mask began in the Soviet Union.

Film historians today are exploring the phenomenon of "phantomasomania" in the Soviet expanses, and they find many reasons: an insufficient number of films of this kind in our country, the Iron Curtain and a lack of information about the life of people in other countries - French life, luxurious furnishings, beautiful cars were shown in "Fantômas" and the habits of people who seemed to our viewers just fabulous. At the same time, the officials simultaneously saw in the film a completely different "cultural and political layer", thanks to which the film nevertheless penetrated the vastness of the USSR: they saw in it a criticism of French social reality and institutions of power: Even such a trifle as the Russian nesting doll that adorned Fandor's room was taken as a sign of the sympathy of the liberal journalist of the capitalist newspaper for the USSR. And Jean Mare, who attended the French Cinema Week in Moscow, spoke very positively about the Soviet Union. In general, this example shows how, if you wish, you can find pluses in literally everything.

In the summer of 1967, the trilogy was widely released in the USSR. Even the first tape showed an incredible result: it was watched by 45 million people, and the third, according to French directories, even gathered 60 million viewers. It was ten times less than in the homeland of the film, France. Although in this case it is undoubtedly not worthwhile to correlate the number of tickets sold with the audience - our film was watched 10, 20, even 30 times. Much later, psychologists realized what Soviet cultural figures and ministerial workers could not immediately foresee: our viewers perceived this film in a completely different way. All over the world, people who have been familiar with the image of a masked villain since childhood considered it a parody of cheap tabloid novels of the beginning of the century, because this is how the French conceived it, and our viewer took everything seriously, and, by the way, he was absolutely not to blame, because the word "comedy" was missing on Russian posters. Russian literary critic and radio journalist Ivan Tolstoy explained the difference in the perception of the picture by Western and Soviet viewers as follows:

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The result was a massive fascination with Fantômas. The teenagers played tricks on each other and strangers by making ominous phone calls: “Fantômas will come to you soon!”; among the criminals, a mass of imitators was instantly found who left their autographs at the place of thefts; a wave of teenage bullying was recorded, in general, the situation looked impressive. The most famous of the imitators of those years was the gang of the Tolstopyatov brothers. The criminals operated in Rostov-on-Don in 1968-1973, wearing black stockings on their heads for camouflage, for which they were nicknamed "Fantomas". As a result, the film was banned. Such a decision in 1970 was made by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolai Shchelokov himself. True, there is information that even after that the screening of films continued on the periphery.

There was a steady legend among Soviet viewers that there were not three films in total, but four, but the last of them was "secret." In it, supposedly, Fantômas finally removes his sinister mask. In reality, these rumors were not completely divorced from reality, because, while conceiving the series, the creators were going to shoot 10, and maybe even 12 episodes. By the way, there was a very serious discussion about the fourth episode. Thanks to the incredible success in the USSR, the film was going to be shot here, in Russian scenery, but Fantomas in Moscow was never made. One of the reasons for the end of the series today is called the fact that the main star of the film, Jean Mare, over time began to feel weary about his role. Apparently, the famous actor was less and less attracted by the fact that the attention of the audience was clearly drawn to himself by the comic character of de Funes - Commissioner Juve. In addition, the success in the USSR was only part of the big picture, and in the world box office the third part of "Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard" was much less successful than the first two. Critics reproached the director for being stereotyped and stagnant, in general, the fourth film never received funding, leaving a huge army of Soviet teenagers severely disappointed.

The Soviet film distribution, of course, can be blamed, but sometimes it still gave our viewers the opportunity to watch films made in other countries. We still love many of them, some seem naive today: 10 foreign films, for which tickets in the USSR were lined up