Birdman

Channing Pollock is, I think, pretty great in Georges Franju’s Judex. In the seg­ments in which he appears unmasked, he’s got a stol­id near-blank affect that is, I think, entirely apro­pos to the unusu­al revised con­cep­tion Franju applied to the character—a some­what pur­it­an­ic­al, stiff avenger, and hardly an omni­po­tent hero. Pollock’s mien is often attrib­uted to the fact that he was, indeed, a stage magi­cian and not an act­or. But an effect­ive per­form­ance is an effect­ive per­form­ance, and Pollock deserves cred­it. As I write in my piece for the Criterion Collection’s Current blog, Pollock nev­er achieved inter­na­tion­al cine­mat­ic fame but he was a VERY big deal in the worlds of magic and nightclub show­biz. I’ve always been fas­cin­ated by this dis­par­ity, and the recent Criterion release of a beau­ti­ful edi­tion of Franju’s film gave the the pre­text to explore it fur­ther. Check out my find­ings here. 

Below, Pollock as a jew­el thief, and anoth­er icon­ic char­ac­ter in French pop cul­ture of the time, in Rocambole, released the same year as Judex.