Au secours!

For fans of haunted house thrillers this short subject could serve as an offbeat Halloween appetizer, an ideal curtain-raiser to The Old Dark House or something along those lines, but for film buffs it is a fascinating artifact that offers more than meets the eye. Au Secours! was the product of a collaboration between director Abel Gance, best remembered for his wildly adventurous cinematic tribute to Napoleon, and Max Linder, remembered as the first great comedy star of the movies. Linder was starring in and directing his own brief comic films in France by 1907, while Charlie Chaplin was still a teenager trying to break into the English music-halls. Linder was eventually overshadowed by his younger rival, and by the 1920s, after a harsh tour of duty in the First World War, he was an emotionally troubled man who told friends that he no longer felt funny. Abel Gance, meanwhile, who had acted in some of Linder's comedies early in his career, had since emerged as one of France's most iconoclastic young film-making talents, a director who vigorously experimented with film and loved to devise new visual techniques and optical effects. In 1923 an exhausted and depleted Linder combined his abilities with those of the energetic Gance, and the result was this eerie horror-comedy.

The premise of Au Secours! will be familiar to everyone who has ever heard a ghost story: Max plays a man who accepts a bet that he cannot remain in an allegedly haunted castle for one hour (11 PM to midnight) without having to call for help. During his time in the castle Max faces a relentless barrage of nightmarish experiences. He encounters a waxwork servant who carries his own head, snakes that crawl into his clothing, a walking skeleton at least ten-feet tall, an alligator, furniture that comes to life, etc. And just when Max believes he's survived everything and is on the verge of winning his bet, he finds there's one more nasty surprise awaiting him.

This haunted house tale allows Gance full opportunity to play with the basic techniques of cinematic trickery such as slow motion, reverse footage, high-speed montage, negative image, and other devices, while it allows Max Linder the opportunity to explore a deeper and darker screen persona. Although in the opening scenes he is essentially reprising the usual 'Max' character we know from his many short comedies, the twists of the tale soon reveal a Max we haven't seen before: tense, frightened, eventually distraught. Despite the comic moments scattered along the way, Max plays his role with a grim intensity that is striking and disturbing.

Although it would not be his final film, Au Secours! is believed to be Max Linder's last surviving work. Its morbid imagery and creepy atmospherics feel all the more macabre today, considering what Fate had in store for its leading player: less than two years after the completion of this film, ill and deeply depressed, Linder died in a suicide pact with his wife on Halloween Day. Au Secours! has a happy ending, but Max Linder did not.

Au Secours!" is a frenchified film that is a collaboration of two of the most important silent film personalities of that European country: Herr Abel Gance und Herr Max Linder.

For Herr Gance to direct this two reel comedy was a kind of break after the contrarieties and problems during the filming of "La Roue" (1923) and before he began another complicated and colossal film project, "Napoléon" (1927), so, "Au Secours!" was an amusing trifle filmed between masterpieces, two film milestones in the silent film history. For Herr Linder, this film was his next to last film before he decided to leave this cruel world.

The original idea of the film was Max Linder's who was a close friend of Herr Gance. It's not a very original idea for a comedy: Herr Max accepts a bet to spend an hour in a haunted house in order to win 1.000 francs, but there's a funny and surprising finale. In spite of "Au Secours!" being merely a divertimento, it has excellent examples of the superb Herr Gance's cinematic achievements and techniques; for example, when Herr Max is clinging to a chandelier the image is distorted in different ways to give the illusion of vertigo. And there is also a fascinating travelling shot when Herr Max is entering the house, a shot that shows us the terrors awaiting the unknowing hero.

The comedy works perfectly well at the service of an efficient Herr Linder who will have to deal with a crowded haunted house full of strange devices and monsters, not to mention the great variety of animals that are in there ( hypos, hyenas, snakes, crocodiles, tigers… ), giving the impression that it is more of a zoo than a haunted house.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must ask for more daily help.

Typical haunted house comedy with neglected French comic Max Linder (who recalls both Terry-Thomas and Raul Julia!), in which the hero – a dapper member of a social club – is dared to spend an hour in such a place by its current owner. Incidentally, the film itself seems to have been made as a bet between Gance and Linder (of whose films this is my first sample); given its inclusion in the Scary Movie Challenge, it’s ironic that Linder and his wife committed ritual suicide on Halloween Day, 1925!

Anyhow, the ghouls that terrify the hero aren’t just the usual gimmicks such as skeletons or headless/monstrous figures – but also an assortment of reptiles (snakes, crocodiles) and wild animals (tigers, lions)! Despite the obvious danger to his life, Max holds firm...but is finally deterred from keeping up the bet to the very last when his wife calls at the house and tells him she’s being menaced (which is, of course, a nasty trick pulled by the owner to ensure his triumph in the matter!).

While it’s not exactly remarkable in the horror/comedy stakes – and repetitive to boot, not least because it has Max mostly stuck in one room (incidentally, I watched the 23-minute version and not the reportedly longer ‘restored’ one at 40)! – Gance once again lays on the technique (though the image unfortunately suffered from distracting jitters all the way through): especially creative is the scene in which Max is hanging on to a chandelier which, declining under his weight, literally pulls the picture down with it!

Au secours! (1924)

*** (out of 4)

Forgotten comic Max Linder takes a bet that he can't stay an hour inside a haunted house without crying out for help. This is a pretty interesting short as it really takes a star and director who have nothing in common and they end up turning out a pretty good film. Gance is best known for his three to five hour epics so seeing him do a short was pretty interesting. The director is able to bring some of his trademark skills to the film including a brilliant looking shot of Max going to the house. The camera-work is very impressive as is the editing and some trick shots done with the framing. Linder does a good job with the comedy, which has him running into several ghouls, snakes and even a dancing skeleton. There's really nothing too original storywise here but Gance really makes the film seem fresh with his style.

This is a cute little French silent comedy about a man who bets another that he can't stay in this castle for one hour due to its being haunted. And, once the guy enters the house, it looks much more like a crazed fun house or maybe like the after-effects of LSD!! While there ARE ghosts and skeletons, there is a weird menagerie of animals, odd special effects and gags as well. It's awfully hard to describe but the visuals alone make the film worth seeing. HOWEVER, understand that the self-indulgent director also had many "funny gags" that totally fell flat and hurt the movie. His "camera tricks" weren't so much tricky but annoying and stupid. IGNORE THESE AND KEEP WATCHING--it does get better. The film is fast paced, funny and worth seeing. In particular, I really liked watching the acting and mugging of Max Linder--he was so expressive and funny! Too bad he is virtually forgotten today. For an interesting but very sad read, check out the IMDb biography on him.