Filibus : Le Mystérieux pirate des airs

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.

Back in 1913 the French movie studio Gaumont and director Louis Feuillade created a craze for crime thriller serials with FANTOMAS about a master-of-disguise super criminal and a dogged detective determined to capture him. This was, no doubt, inspired by Sherlock Holmes and his pursuit of Professor James Moriarty but this time around the focus was on the criminal rather than the detective. Later in 1916 Feuillade would create JUDEX about a caped crime fighter battling injustice (sound familiar?) and conclude the genre in 1917 with LES VAMPIRES about a gang of super criminals led by a woman.

I'm providing this background because it is generally not realized that before the outbreak of World War I, the two leading film industries were in France and in Italy. So if the French were cashing in on crime serials, then the Italians would follow suit. In April 1915 they premiered the first of what was to have been a five part serial about the exploits of Filibus, a female master criminal who had multiple identities and who carried out her crimes, a la Jules Verne, from a flying metal airship. Unfortunately WWI escalated and the other four episodes were never produced.

The story is set in then contemporary Italy. A daring series of robberies have been committed by the mysterious thief known only as Filibus. We already know from the credits that Filibus is a woman as we have seen her in her various disguises. In reality she is a rich socialite who steals from those in her circle. When she learns that top detective Kutt Hendy is on the case, she intends to frame him for the thefts while she goes after some rare diamonds. Her plans succeed, but for how long? Valeria Creti is wonderful as the titular character while Giovanni Spano is the stoic detective trying to catch her.

Milestone Films has released this title on DVD and Blu-Ray. The print comes from The Netherlands and was restored by their celebrated Eye Film Museum. The print looks pretty good although there is some damage but the color tinting helps to diminish it except for one sequence. There are a host of extras including 3 background scores, some historical shorts and a complete 1916 Italian feature also starring Valeria Creti. If you enjoyed FANTOMAS which inspired FILIBUS which inspired LES VAMPIRES then you must see this. However Milestone's 21st century description of the movie is a little too over-the-top...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

A lady equipped at pulling off disguises (easier to blend in during black&white times -- before the world gained color) plans and executes some heists with the help of her trusty airship. The thefts don't amount to mastermind status, but rather fun little trickery with a few tools aside from costume changes.

It is a charming film albeit with some ridiculous scenes that might have been intentionally silly, or just due to the time period.

You probably won't laugh or cry, but a smile throughout is likely. This movie also reminds us how airships became the 8-track of the aviation world. That's a shame. We can handle hydrogen better now -- let's build some airships!

An elegant baroness literally descends from the sky from an airship to commit thefts by posing as a male. She calls herself "Filibus," and the mayhem she creates for the victims as well as law enforment produces an Italian film noted as being so far ahead of its time it's still amazes audiences today.

The short-lived Italian movie studio, Corona Film, released in March 1915 "Filibus," named after the main protagonist. Stylized in the manner of France's successful movie series "Fantomas," the female counterpart "Filibus" amps up the action by introducing a science fiction element in technology to the female lead's behavior. The baroness dresses up as a man while she's committing illegal acts and going incognito in male clothes in her public interactions. Some have labeled the actress, relatively unknown Valeria Creti, as playing the first lesbian "bad girl" character. Others have noted that she is the first cross-dresser and transgender to appear in cinema. Her genderfluidity allows the baroness to disguise herself to throw off a veteran detective hot on Filibus' criminal trail.

Corona Film promised five episodes in the film series, but two months later Italy entered War World One, a blow to that country's nascent film industry. Before the war was over, Corona went out of business and there was no follow-up to what had been promised as a first-rate crime series.

I have been waiting to see this movie for some four years now. That's not much, really, since fans of old movies sometimes have to wait decades, if they are lucky enough to get their wish at all. However, images of a Beaux Artes poster, showing a woman descending from a dirigible, made this one seem special. Unfortunately, the copies available to me were unwatchable. Finally, a decent print has fallen into my hands. It is a little soft, and there is some damage, but the movie turns out to be a deliriously insane Evil Mastermind melodrama, as mad as Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES.

First off, who or what is Filibus? It turns out to be Valeria Creti, who is also the Baroness Troixmonde and the Count De La Brive. Learning that a banker she has robbed has set detective Giovanni Spano on her trail, she conceives an incoherent plan: she will convince Spano that he himself is Filibus, using his own, modern scientific methods against him; and she will court his sister, Cristina Ruspoli, as the Count.

Given that Miss Creti is a baroness and wealthy enough to have her own dirigible with a loyal crew, her motivation is unclear. If this movie had be produced this year, she would look like a militant Lesbian feminist, or perhaps someone who identifies as a heterosexual cis-male. Yet applying those standards to a work of fiction more than a hundred years old seems wrong. More likely, the impulse was to produce one of the would-be world conquerors like Fu Manchu, Dr. Mabuse, or Pinky and the Brain -- only this time, for variety's sake, let's make the mastermind a woman!

It is the incomplete transformation of the archetype that makes it so bizarrely entertaining. I mentioned Feuillade, whose melodramatic thrillers and serials exhibit the same outre qualities. I am convinced those arise because of the terrific pace at which he worked. Hey! We've got a balloon for two days. How do we write that in? Let's use it to go mail a letter. Hey, we've killed off Musidora in the fifth episode of the serial and we'll need her later! No problem, we'll take another Musidora out of a box. Feuillade would write himself into a corner, snap his fingers and come up with a quick solution, like Bugs Bunny pulling a cannon from offstage. The audience would look puzzled, think "Ah, this will all be explained later!" and forget about it.

Of course, LES VAMPIRES was a serial that, were you to binge-watch it, would take more than seven hours. As for this one, the end credits suggest that there will be more encounters between the mysterious Filibus and the scientific detective. Perhaps the answers to these questions and others will be given in the sequels. Does anyone want to make one?