From 1915 to 1916, French filmmaker Louis Feuillade (Fantômas, Judex) unleased the illicit adventures of Les Vampires. The 10-episode serial served as a primary influence on Olivier Assayas's 1996 film Irma Vep, a name Maggie Cheung shares with Musidora's original cat burglar. Though lesser-known, and considerably smaller in scope, Italian filmmaker Mario Roncoroni's 1915 Filibus offers much of the same cloak and dagger excitement. Instead of horror tropes, screenwriter and Futurist author Giovanni Bertinetti drew from science fiction for the tale of a sexually fluid, cross-dressing, high-flying jewel thief — a prime example of what we now know as steampunk.
Much like her Gallic counterpart, Filibus (the charming Valeria Creti) doesn't operate in isolation. A silvery dirigible serves as her all-male crew's combination hideout, getaway vehicle, and makeshift elevator since the airship spends the entire time drifting above the clouds, enabling crew members to enter and exit by way of a pulley attached to a metal gondola. Since no one thinks to look to the sky whenever Filibus makes an escape, she's able to disappear with ease.
It’s the kind of thing that wouldn't work in real life, but Roncoroni makes it look sufficiently convincing. He builds his swiftly-paced film around one particular heist. At a fancy party, antiquity-collecting host Leo Sandy (Filippo Vallino) introduces his guests, including Baroness Troixmond (Filibus’s outward-facing persona), to his latest acquisition: an Egyptian cat sculpture with diamond eyes.
Unlike some silver-screen detectives who prove more arrogant than intelligent, Sandy's friend, Det. Kutt-Hendy (Giovanni Spano), represents a formidable foe. Knowing that Sandy has made himself a target, he replaces the real diamonds with fakes, storing the originals in a metal trunk. Then, he goes a step further by inserting a miniature camera behind one of the fakes. If anyone breaks into Sandy's mansion and takes off with the jewels, he'll have photographic evidence to share with the polizia.
It’s a solid plan, though the fun of silent cat burglar films lies in the way thieves tend to outsmart even the wiliest of gumshoes. Better yet, they're usually able to do so without resorting to violence, though Filibus doesn't hesitate to add a sleeping drop or two to an unattended beverage (she also seduces Kutt-Hendy's sister, Léonora, in the guise of Count de Brive, her male identity).
Extras include six films (five shorts and one feature) and isolated music scores from Donald Sosin and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, whose richly-detailed work burnishes Filibus's fantastical action. The only thing missing: a commentary track to illuminate the lives and careers of Roncoroni, Bertinetti, Creti, and their talented collaborators.
All told, it's hard not to imagine that their efforts didn't inspire, or at least predict, the retro-futuristic entertainments of the 1960s, like Mission: Impossible and the James Bond series with their identity-altering innovations and ingenious escape plans. Significantly though, women dominate these earlier films, making them seem more futuristic than ever. Highly recommended for science fiction, fantasy, and women's studies film collections.