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tilly_stratfordI was researching how to get hold of more of the Fantômas books when I came across an odd little tidbit of pop culture: A monotonous yet creepy song from 1933 called 'La Complainte de Fantômas', or The Ballad of Fantômas. It's even available on Spotify.
Had it been five or six verses long it'd be a fairly listenable song, but no, it has TWENTY-SIX verses each cryptically referring plot points from the forty-something novels, with little coherency between them. I guess that's why they chose to call it a ballad.
I particularly like how the first verse goes (translated):
But hey, at least my favourite character Inspector Juve and his loyal journalist companion Fandor get a few shoutouts. Though not mentioning all the crossdressing is a clear shortcoming of the song.
Had it been five or six verses long it'd be a fairly listenable song, but no, it has TWENTY-SIX verses each cryptically referring plot points from the forty-something novels, with little coherency between them. I guess that's why they chose to call it a ballad.
I particularly like how the first verse goes (translated):
Listen up - hey quiet down -And then the remaining twenty-five verses are detailed descriptions of all the grisly things Fantômas does, like making gloves out of cadaver hands to disguise his finger prints (they're pretty morbid books in that early 1900s pulp fiction kind of way). Too dreadful to name, indeed.
To this sad and mournful list
Of crimes too dreadful to name
Of tortures and violence
Unpunished each time, alas
By the criminal Fantômas
But hey, at least my favourite character Inspector Juve and his loyal journalist companion Fandor get a few shoutouts. Though not mentioning all the crossdressing is a clear shortcoming of the song.
