One lends only to the rich: that is why these two films based on the deeds of the famous anarchist Bonnot and produced by Eclair in April and May of 1912 are normally attributed to Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset: L’Auto grise (Les Bandits en Automobile, 300 meters) and Hors la loi (420 meters). They were of course news stories reconstructed according to the best tradition of the genre, especially Bonnot’s death at Choisy-le-Roi. The actors who play out Crime and Punishment in these two films were not actors normally seen hanging around the Epinay studios and were not even mentioned in Eclair’s ads in corporate newspapers: only the Alliance generale Cinématographique, which distributed Eclair’s films, did advertising. Les Bandits en automobile was, in fact, prohibited in many cities in France. Since the film censorship board did not exist before the war of 1914, it was up to local authorities to prohibit performances or films that they deemed harmful to public order. The deeds of the Bonnot gang would have left Jasset with too little room for his imagination: he was much more at ease with Zigomar at the heels of the man at the center of a second series of adventures: the detective star of Éclair Nick Carter.

Anthologie du cinéma, 1976, L’Avant-Scène, Paris