"THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR" (1967)

The Unknown Man of Shandigor
(1967)
Directed by Jean-Louis Roy
Written by Jean-Louis Roy, Gabriel Arout, Pierre Koralnik
Starring Daniel Emilfork, Marie-France Boyer, Jacque Dufilho, Howard Vernon, Serge Gainsbourg
Running time 90 minutes
Blu-ray available from Deaf Crocodile and OCN Distribution via Vinegar Syndrome

By Hunter Bush

I first encountered The Unknown Man of Shandigor last year, while covering the Fantasia international film festival. I personally have limited film fest experience, so this may not be unusual in a larger context but Fantasia has always made room for older film restorations alongside their usual, hugely impressive crop of genre fare from around the globe. In trying my best to watch & cover as many films as I possibly could, I found this. And I’ve been low key obsessed with it since.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor’s effect on me has been an insidious one; the film’s hold over me growing slowly and subtly. As the end of the year approached and I considered my favorite films seen within it, Shandigor came to mind more and more. Admittedly, it wasn’t made or originally released within the calendar year, but it was a first-time watch for me and, as far as I’ve been able to find out, is a relatively hidden gem. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly (?) the film has become as unknown as the man of its title, despite screening at the Cannes Film festival in 1967.

I’ve written about my thoughts on the film itself before for MovieJawn - I encourage you to read that review - so I’ll be as brief as I can in describing it. The Unknown Man of Shandigor is a spy film; it exists snugly within the bounds of the espionage genre, even today, but is obviously such a product of its time and a reflection of where spy films were in the growth as a genre. UMoS takes many familiar clichés and character archetypes and fiddles with them, inverting some, outright parodying others and allowing some to exist, played straight, alongside highly avant garde trappings and ideas.

By 1967, the spy genre was popular enough to be regularly lambasted. NBC’s Get Smart (arguably the height of spy parody, and co created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks!) had been on the air since ‘65, as had Britain’s absurdist spy pastiche The Avengers (though it had premiered in the UK in ‘61). Even the somewhat infamous original Casino Royale was likewise about to his cinemas. Though all three of these examples (and, doubtless more that I’m forgetting/am unaware of) utilize different approaches to their sendups of spy stories, they all relied on their audiences family with the conventions of the genre: doomsday devices, mad scientists with evil lairs, femme fatales, gadgets, and casual sex. Just to name a few.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor tackles all those mentioned above, and more. Instead of a doomsday device, the mad scientist (the great Daniel Emilfork as Herbert Von Krantz) has created The Canceller: a device which can neutralize all atomic bombs. But peace is, apparently, just as undesirable an outcome as war for the involved espionage agencies (French, Russian, American, etc) as they’re all practically tripping over each other in an effort to swindle Von Krantz’s device away from him. Caught in the middle of all of this is his beautiful but melancholy daughter Sylvaine (Marie-France Boyer), in contrast to a traditional femme fatale, Sylvaine is wistful for the summer fling -style romance she had while on vacation …in a place called Shandigor. There are other inversions on the sort of “sexpionage” clichés recognizable to those familiar with Ian Fleming’s James Bond character, including the ex-Nazi turned American agent Bobby Gun (Howard Vernon) who is deeply committed to his monogamous relationship.

I could go on, but this article isn’t about the film, per se (as I said, you can read more about that in my previous review), it’s about the Blu-ray restoration by Cinémathèque suisse and Deaf Crocodile, distributed through OCD Distribution (via Vinegar Syndrome). So, this was the same transfer I was lucky enough to catch via Fantasia Fest and it’s absolutely gorgeous! Director Jean-Louis Roy and cinematographer Roger Bimpage worked in tandem to create a film filled to the brim with unique visuals, stunning locations, and avant garde compositions, all arrestingly realized in black and white. In one of the supplemental interviews, Swiss native Roy discusses his impetus for making this, his first feature film. By his estimation, the greatest association with Swiss cinema was documentary, especially those revolving around the Red Cross and Roy, a cinephile and admirer of the French New Wave, simply wanted to show the world that the Swiss were capable of much more. He rolled up his childhood fondness for comic strips into the trappings of spy, detective, and adventure novels. Interestingly, Roy only wrote the scripts, leaving the dialogue to Pierre Koralnik and playwright Gabriel Arout, a method similar to the process of the early Marvel Comics stories which would be drawn with only a broad strokes idea of the plot, with word balloons and text boxes to be filled in later.

I can’t overstate how striking and captivating the visuals here are. Similar to the Tarsem Singh film The Fall (2006), Roy (and crew) found locations that draw the viewer in, forcing you to pay attention to scenes that would otherwise be your basic shoe-leather, nuts-and-bolts plot moments, and thanks to the quality of the Blu-ray transfer, I could soak up every detail. The score and soundtrack, as well as the dialogue, are just as crisp. The orchestral score was actually composed by the director’s father, Alphonse Roy and it fits the film perfectly, adopting the conventions of 1960s spy films as much as the more avant garde aesthetics of the films Shandigor is referencing.

Finally, there’s the supplemental material. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing and when I like a film, and/or am unaware of how it came to be, I’ll gladly sponge up hours of essays and explanations. For the average film nerd there’s plenty to enjoy: a series of brief television interviews with director Roy and stars Boyer, Emilfork, and Jacque Dufilho elaborating on the artistic inspiration behind the film’s creation and the then largely unknown director’s methods for recruiting his cast. There’s a feature-length commentary track from film journalist Samm Deighan and an essay booklet from filmmaker and author Chris D. which both help to elaborate on the environment in which the film came to be, and the commentary especially was filled with interesting factlets - like how costar Ban Carruthers was once cast as Daredevil opposite Angela Bowie as Black Widow!

Like I said, for your average film buff, this is a generous bounty, but personally, being as interested in this film’s genesis as I am, I would have happily watched 4x as much. The comparisons that repeatedly come up for UMoS are with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, so for lack of an overabundance of supplementary material, I suppose it’s time I rewatch the one and finally watch the other, hunh? I’m also interested in checking out the cast in some of the roles they were known for when Jean-Louis Roy cast them to potentially see what he saw. Marie-France Boyer in Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur, Howard Vernon in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z, Daniel Emilfork in Jean Brismée’s The Devil’s Nightmare; knowing that these performances may have specifically lead to the actors’ being cast in Shandigor is such a fascinating thread for me to follow!

I suppose, in a nutshell, that is what I love about film. In our daily life, we’re inundated with ads and discourse around the “must-see” movies of the day, and having been actively interested in film for many years there are of course many movies that I’ve put on my personal “to watch” list, but sometimes you find something that exists entirely outside of your bubble of awareness and watching them (really whether you like them or not) opens up new avenues into the truly vast universe of movie history. Restorations of these lesser-known, lesser-seen movies, especially with supplements to give them context, help expand the minds of cinephiles young and old. They have the opportunity to cut through all the noise and lead us to unknown cinematic lands. Which is beautiful.

There are no high-speed chases or blockbuster-size explosions, but there’s more idiosyncratic style in five minutes here than you’ll find in most entire films. In an era where we are accepting of genre-crossing fare on a larger scale than maybe ever before, The Unknown Man of Shandigor is an example of effortless style and mood; oozing cool from every frame. The Unknown Man of Shandigor would be worth buying even without the additional materials, however. The film’s trailer - also included on the Blu-ray - proclaims it “A molotov cocktail of thrills!” and I would wholeheartedly agree.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is available on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.
You can find me on twitter, instagram, or letterboxd.

Fantasia Fest 2021 - THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR (1967)

The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967)

Directed by Jean-Louis Roy

Written by Roy, Gabriel Arout, and Pierre Koralnik

Starring Daniel Emilfork, Marie-France Boyer, Jacques Dufilho, Howard Vernon, Serge Gainsbourg

Running time 1 hour, 30 minutes

Currently unrated but contains Avant-garde imagery and language, ennui, and instances of spycraft-related death

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is without a doubt the best and most excellent Avant-garde take on the spy genre that I’ve ever seen. Yes, that’s a very specific group of qualifiers, but I’m serious. Gorgeously shot in black & white, with shots composed like an art film (or like one of those especially grandiose perfume commercials popular in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s), director and co-writer Jean-Louis Roy has made an espionage film that’s as visually arresting as it is narratively nebulous. That’s not a criticism either, because it’s not trying to tell a tightly-scripted and intricate spy thriller, instead using that framework to riff on the genre’s conventions from a satirical POV.

It all starts with a gentle inversion of the usual spy movie tropes: instead of an eccentric megalomaniac with some MacGuffin that puts the entire globe in danger, Daniel Emilfork plays Von Krantz an eccentric regular-maniac who has developed the Canceler, a device which could end atomic warfare worldwide. He’s still a scenery-chewing lunatic with an albino assistant (Marcel Imhoff), a beautiful daughter who never leaves their estate (Marie-France Boyer), and even a “Beast” that lives in their swimming pool! In other words a pretty typical entourage in these types of stories.

Von Krantz himself even ostensibly resembles the ranting mad scientist character. He’s prone to dramatic monologues that would make Ernst Blofeld or Hank Scorpio envious, with lines like “Fear can be shaped” and when asked by a reporter in the film’s cold open whom he admires most, he responds “Dracula”. More often than not though, his monologues are about existential dread and general ennui; loneliness and isolation. Sure, he puts a man to death using radioactive gas that liquifies the intruder but that dude (co-writer Gabriel Arout) shouldn’t have been lurking about!

The agent played by Arout is one representative of the many international espionage agencies interested in the Canceler. They’re the French contingent: five equally bald men in black turtlenecks who are trained (by Spymaster Serge Gainsbourg!) to be masters of disguise. Gainsbourg also performs a farewell song as Arout’s spy’s remains are disposed of called “Bye Bye Mister Spy”, which I guess is the The Unknown Man of Shandigor’s version of Bond song. Not gonna lie; it’s unsurprisingly pretty good.

In addition to the French agents there’s a corps of Russian spies (directed by Jacques Dufilho), American agent Bobby Gun (Howard Vernon) who’s an inversion of the womanizing James Bond archetype: he goes into expansive detail about being in love with a woman named Esther (Jacqueline Danno) and, a late addition to the film the Black Sun-Orient organization. Their agent, The Man with the Platinum Ring (Pierre Chan) arrives out of a misty ocean in a frogman suit and gets into a technologically advanced Jaguar to go snoop on Von Krantz’s assistant Yvan (Imhoff).

One strange thing about The Unknown Man of Shandigor is that so much of it feels like it’s referencing The Prisoner (the equally avant-garde British miniseries about an intelligence agent) but I’m skeptical to make that connection since they both debuted in 1967. Perhaps they were both referencing some other bit of culture that I’m unaware of, or maybe there was just something in the air at that time? Firstly there’s a certain aloofness to the logic of some of the gadgetry. In horror there’s the phrase “non-Euclidean geometry”, which specifically refers to the concept of places whose existence does not make physical sense or obey the normal rules. Whatever the equivalent of “non-Euclidean logic” would be, I think it would apply to smoke that opens electronic doors, or a light beam that allows you to eavesdrop on a conversation.

Then there’s daughter Sylvaine’s (Boyer’s) story. After spotting some spies lurking on the edge of the property in a very non covert manner, she uses their presence as distraction enough to escape the grounds, only to be picked up by the French contingent. She is interrogated, gassed and wakes up back at Shandigor which, it turns out, is a location. Who knew! But it seems like some kind of tropic, semi-isolated resort island; it’s beautiful. There she finds Manuel (Ben Carruthers), a man with whom she’d had a brief fling years ago that she’s never gotten over, and he seems to be the only other person. How convenient. Perhaps too convenient?

These touches of surreality (How did she get to Shandigor? And where exactly is it?), combined with details like the fact that the smoke that opens doors is just a fire extinguisher, or that Von Krantz’s “Beast” is just dry ice discs causing the surface to bubble, add to the casually chaotic atmosphere. That DIY, makeshift attitude acts as a further twist on the usual approach to this genre, which is usually very polished and measured. But beyond even that, I just genuinely loved that creativity and the offhandedness of it all.

There are some aspects of the story - of the ways in which various characters relate to each other and what their respective goals are - that don’t quite make sense to me, but y’know what? The same goes for Quantum of Solace from 2008; a film which A) is in a language I speak and B) I have seen more than just once. At least in the case of The Unknown Man of Shandigor, I think it was intentional.

The Unknown Man of Shandigoor has stuck with me since I watched it, kicking around in my head, growing in my esteem and in lieu of keeping it a secret, I am actively spilling the beans. If you like spies, or art films, or Serge Gainsbourg: seek this film out! Find that Man!

The Unknown Man of Shandigor screened as part of Fantasia Fest 2021. The restoration was handled by Cinematheque Suisse.