Ferragus, Chief of the Dévorants
Honoré de Balzac · first published 1834
Filmed three times in the silent era, when Paris crime serials were the most popular thing in cinema.
3 versions · 1910–1923
Balzac’s tale of a secret society, a husband’s jealousy and a woman who cannot explain where she goes was exactly the material French cinema wanted in the 1910s and 1920s, and it was made three times in thirteen years.
It is the first part of the History of the Thirteen, and it does something few crime stories dare: the mystery is solved early, and the damage takes the rest of the book.
On screen
3Film and television, earliest first.
- 1910 Ferragus André Calmettes
- 1918 Ferragus Alfred Halm
- 1923 Ferragus Gaston Ravel
Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.