Still relevant after 110 years
I came across this little movie some time ago and knew nothing about it beforehand besides the year - I just love those good old movies, they are so silly at times but very informative; with each one I can see the signs of a cinema yet to come, how much they influenced today's cinematography and most probably everything that was made up in the first 30 years since the invention of cinema had got its tails in today's industry as well. Filibus is certainly one of those.
When it comes to who made what first, people tend to forget that not everything was made in America - sure the likes of D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin have popularized the moving pictures art genre but let's not abandon also the forgotten creators of yesterday, i.e. The movie makers of Italy who first came up with a peplum genre and epic, long tales (two hour long 'Cabiria' was made in 1914, a whole year before Griffith's groundbreaking 'The birth of a nation') and then tranformed the detective genre with 'Filibus' adding sci-fi and a little of cross-dressing drama to it (that was mostly unheard of in the 1910s, especially in Italy).
Filibus is the name of a female antagonist, played gorgeously by Valeria Creti, an evil mastermind, a criminal and simply a sky pirate (this way it was put in the title of the movie). She has an airship, a zeppelin-like aircraft which she uses to transport her, drop by and pick her up anywhere she wants and multiple identities, including male, which makes her crimes almost unsolvable by the poor detective Kutt-Hendy who just doesn't know who to look for.
The told story is simple enough to make you dissolve in it and short enough to carry you till the end safely without falling asleep. Filibus is insidious and she makes you want to empathize with her more than with others and you unwillingly start to root for her instead of good guys of the movie who are just plain boring people with nothing but a thin shadow behind their one-dimensional characters. In fact, the whole 70-minute movie could have easily been a short 25-30 minute first episode of the series that was for some reasons stretched out to full length but there never came a continuation of this story, and it's a pity. I think Filibis had got potential back in the day and should have been either a series of films (in the vein of Louis Feuillade's Vampires films that came out later in the year) or a longer, more well-thoughtout detective story than it turned out to be.
Considering its solid age of 110 years Filibus doesn't feel dated or irrelevant, it uses the technical advantages of the era to the movie's fullest and the cast gives fine performances, if you're not into authenticity that is.
When it comes to who made what first, people tend to forget that not everything was made in America - sure the likes of D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin have popularized the moving pictures art genre but let's not abandon also the forgotten creators of yesterday, i.e. The movie makers of Italy who first came up with a peplum genre and epic, long tales (two hour long 'Cabiria' was made in 1914, a whole year before Griffith's groundbreaking 'The birth of a nation') and then tranformed the detective genre with 'Filibus' adding sci-fi and a little of cross-dressing drama to it (that was mostly unheard of in the 1910s, especially in Italy).
Filibus is the name of a female antagonist, played gorgeously by Valeria Creti, an evil mastermind, a criminal and simply a sky pirate (this way it was put in the title of the movie). She has an airship, a zeppelin-like aircraft which she uses to transport her, drop by and pick her up anywhere she wants and multiple identities, including male, which makes her crimes almost unsolvable by the poor detective Kutt-Hendy who just doesn't know who to look for.
The told story is simple enough to make you dissolve in it and short enough to carry you till the end safely without falling asleep. Filibus is insidious and she makes you want to empathize with her more than with others and you unwillingly start to root for her instead of good guys of the movie who are just plain boring people with nothing but a thin shadow behind their one-dimensional characters. In fact, the whole 70-minute movie could have easily been a short 25-30 minute first episode of the series that was for some reasons stretched out to full length but there never came a continuation of this story, and it's a pity. I think Filibis had got potential back in the day and should have been either a series of films (in the vein of Louis Feuillade's Vampires films that came out later in the year) or a longer, more well-thoughtout detective story than it turned out to be.
Considering its solid age of 110 years Filibus doesn't feel dated or irrelevant, it uses the technical advantages of the era to the movie's fullest and the cast gives fine performances, if you're not into authenticity that is.
- jamesjustice-92
- Mar 4, 2025