Taking a look at an E-Mail from a DVD seller, I found out that they had recently got hold of a Horror mini-series starring Edith Scob. Finding Scob to be superb in Eyes Without A Face and The Burning Court, (1960 and 1962- both also reviewed) I set my eyes on this series.
Note: Review contains some plot details.
The plot:
Deeming himself as looking so grotesque that it would be impossible for anyone to fall in love with him, Benedict Masson gazes from the shadows at the beautiful Christine Gaillard. Aware of her being engaged to highly regarded surgeon Jacques Quentin , Masson is surprised at one night, to spot Gaillard embracing an unknown man.
Knowing Masson for years, Gaillard decides to turn to him, for help over concerns she has, about recent events at her workplace: the de Coulteray Mansion. Knocking on the door of his country house, Gaillard is greeted by the sight of Masson's hands being covered in blood.
View on the mini-series:
Chiseled into life, Lee Godart gives a very good performance as Gabriel which leans into Gothic Romance, thanks to Godart holding long, heavenly hazy gazes towards Christine, that capture the shadow of impending doom which hangs over Gabriel. Hiding as a phantom in the shadows, Jean-Paul Zehnacker gives a wonderful performance as Masson, whose self-loathing and fear of is grotesque features being seen, has Zehnacker digging his nails deep into his own face.
Dying as the house of de Coulteray falls, Edith Scob gives a magnetic turn as Marquise, with Scob taking in the decayed surroundings, and blowing them out with a brittle, fractured vocal delivery, that emphasises the thirst for murder that drips down the walls of the de Coulteray mansion. Linking Gabriel and Masson together, Yolande Folliot gives a bewitching performance as Christine, due to Folliot binding an enticing curiosity to unearth the truth about the de Coulteray household, with a horrified shiver, as Gabriel sinks into the ocean of the beyond.
For the second Gaston Leroux story that features a disfigured man lurking in the shadows, as he looks at his great love Christine, the screenplay by Robert Scipion blends two Leroux novels together, to create one excellent unsettling tale.
Taking place in 1925, (the year that the Universal/ Lon Chaney adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera was released) Scipion staples the novels together, via a delicious twist into the psychotronic, resulting in the curtain falling on Masson, opening up a left-field groove into reincarnation psychodrama.
Whilst the linking of the novels has rough edges, Scipion chops them down, with an excellent criss-crossing of genres. Scipion smoothly handles across the long run time, going from the high emotion Gothic Romance of Christine and Gabriel along with the Costume Drama unfolding within the de Coulteray Mansion, to Gothic Horror screams rising from Masson's self-loathing.
Although extensive day for night filming muddies the clarity of the nighttime-set sequences, director Marcel Cravenne & cinematographer Albert Schimel brighten up the romance between Gabriel and Christine, by surrounding them with refine high angle shots over the couple, landing on glossy tracking shots running with the couple to the very edge of their love.
Facing Masson and Gabriel next to each other, Cravenne unmasks them both with a terrific brittle Gothic Horror atmosphere unmasked by stylish dissolves and razor-sharp whip-pans, which land on Masson picking up the doll.
