Nuits Rouges

Nuits Rouges (lit. Red Nights, in French) is a 1974 French-Italian crime thriller film directed by Georges Franju. The film was released in the U.S. in an English-dubbed version by New Line Cinema under the title Shadowman in 1975. It is an adaptation of a 1973 French-Italian-Yugoslav TV mini-series titled "L'Homme sans visage" (The Man Without a Face).^[5]

Nuits Rouges
Directed by	Georges Franju
Screenplay by	Jacques Champreaux[1]
Produced by	Raymond Froment[1]
Starring	Gayle Hunnicutt Jacques Champreux Gert Froebe Joséphine Chaplin Ugo Pagliai
Cinematography	Guido Renzo Bertoni[1]
Edited by	Gilbert Natot[1]
Music by	Georges Franju
Production companies	Terra Film S.O.A.T.[1]
Distributed by	Planfilm[2]
Release date	November 20, 1974 (1974-11-20) (France)
Running time	105 minutes
Countries	France Italy[3]
Language	French[4]

Premise

Paul de Borrego is a scholar whose field of research is the history of Templars. His discoveries are used by a criminal organisation led by the mysterious Faceless Man to help the latter expand his army of killers composed of people with dead brains.

Cast

• Gayle Hunnicutt as the woman
• Jacques Champreux as the Faceless Man
• Josephine Chaplin as Martine Leduc
• Ugo Pagliai as Paul de Borrego
• Gert Froebe as Police commissioner Sorbier

Production

Nuits Rouges was filmed in 1973.^[6] The film is a 100-minute theatrical version of a film originally commissioned for television.^[6] The budget for the film was so modest that Franju had to film all interiors of the film on a studio set.^[7]

Jacques Champreux (Louis Feuillade's grandson^[8]) who plays one the lead roles, had directed the series that inspired the film. He also had worked on Franju's Judex, which was also based on a film series.^[9]

Nuits Rouges is Franju's last feature film.^[10]

Release

Nuits Rouges was released on November 20, 1974, in France.^[11]

Reception

Nuits Rouges received mixed and even mocking reviews from French critics on its release.^[12] Nuits Rouges was released on DVD in the United Kingdom as part of Eureka's Masters of Cinema series along with another film by Georges Franju, Judex (1963) in 2008.^[13]