This is among the final images of the first episode (the translated title amounts to The Severed Head) of Feuillade's delirious, nearly absurdist 1915 silent epic, Les Vampires.
An assassin dispatched by the criminal society known as The Vampires absconds across the rooftops of Paris after a gruesome murder in a magistrate's antechamber. The sleek, slinky bodies of The Vampires (all clad in form-fitting black ensembles during their criminal exploits) ballet across the screen in marked contrast to frantic clodhopping of the journalists and authorities pursuing them. His prone stance embodies both stasis and action, and the stilled image leaves the speed of his movements ambiguous. The Vampires' violent, if aesthetically thrilling, disruption of bourgeois society is encapsulated in this image of a purely black, cat-like figure stalking across and against a strict geometry.
*Though I'm sure others have done it, I first came across a feature such as this at Glenn Kenny's blog, Some Came Running, and I'd like to give credit where it's due. I think it's a useful way of looking at films. It's admittedly a narrowed perspective, but worthwhile nonetheless, as a carefully selected, isolated image (one not selected by a distributor's marketing department) can speak volumes about a filmmaker and/or a film.
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