‘Vampires’ Thrives in Turner’s Serial Treatment

Even though “Les Vampires” is a silent movie, you can tell the performers were speaking French as they wandered the streets of Paris, just from the body language and facial expressions. By 1915, it seems, the distinctive national pout ‘n’ shrug style had already been perfected.

The revelations of watching movies almost 85 years old aren’t always earth-shaking. Yet the small surprises can be delicious. The writer and director of “Les Vampires,” Louis Feuillade, shot the 10 episodes of his classic serial (about a gang of lethal cat burglars) almost entirely on the boulevards and in the aristocratic drawing rooms of the City of Light. From time to time, in the background, you’ll see a woman emerge from a shop, then stop dead in her tracks to watch the action.

At the very moment this footage was being shot, Renoir and Debussy were hard at work, and Marcel Proust was holed up in his cork-lined bedroom, obsessively revising volume two of “Remembrance of Things Past.”

Turner Classic Movies channel is presenting “Les Vampires” as part of its “Silent Sunday Nights” series, rolling out several episodes a week at 9 p.m. beginning Sunday. In effect, Turner is completing the restoration process undertaken last year by David Shepard, who replaced the film’s title cards, missing for more than 50 years, and reapplied the wall-to-wall color tints of blue and green, and amber.

Shepard’s restored version has been shown in theaters, but only now can it be seen as Feuillade intended, as a series of discrete thrillers with recurring characters and a hugely complicated meta-plot. Think of it as a turn-of-the-century “The X-Files.”

Like other European TV productions that landed here initially in theaters (“Heimat,” “The Kingdom”), “Les Vampires” suffers when you try to wolf it all down at a single sitting. Yet taken in measured doses, the series is great fun: fast-paced and tightly plotted, with flashes of humor and some eerie images of nocturnal footpad activity that can still make your flesh creep decades later. The first episode is called “The Severed Head,” and before it’s over you will see why.

The Vampires are a gang of thieves that prey on the rich. Our hero is Phillipe Guerande (Edouard Math), a plucky reporter, who always seems to be in the right place at the right time, and if he isn’t, his comic sidekick, Mamazette (Marcel Levesque, whose nose is bigger than his pipe), certainly will be.

The central iconic figure of “Les Vampire” is slinky Irma Vep (Musidora), the first and greatest of all movie “vamps.” In costume she is often just a black silhouette against the skyline, slinking between the chimneys.

The American Cinematheque in Hollywood is planning a major Feuillade retrospective later this year, and Turner’s coup is bound to whet your appetite.

* “Les Vampires” airs on Turner Movie Classics Sunday at 9 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).