Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset

Biography

A locksmith’s son slipped into the world on 30 March 1862 in the riverside town of Fumay, Ardennes, and grew up to pick far more imaginative locks than any metal mechanism. Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset traded iron for images, scripting and staging lightning-paced stories when cinema was still learning to walk. In 1912 he pitted the cunning Zigomar against master detective Nick Carter, then, the following year, unleashed the slinky spy Protéa and the first episode of Zigomar, the “Black Scourge,” turning Parisian nickelodeons into dens of breathless spectators. The reels were still warm when, on 22 June 1913, the 51-year-old pioneer closed his own final curtain in Paris, leaving the new art form forever faster, bolder, and a shade more dangerous.