Abel Gance (Parte II): Os Épicos, Napoleão e a Polivisão
Gance's next work, J'accuse (1919), produced for Pathé, was his first epic film, a massive, deeply moving indictment of war. Profoundly affected by the horrors of the First World War, which had devastated France and taken the lives of many of his friends, Gance created a film that, upon its release soon after the Armistice, became the screen’s first cry of revolt against the organized slaughter that had ravaged modern civilization from 1914 to 1918. In the film’s famous climax, the hero, a poet, develops the mystic power to call back the ghosts of the war dead (played by real soldiers from the front, many of whom died in battle shortly after appearing in the sequence) to accuse the living and demand to know the reason for their sacrifice. Gance’s use of rapid cutting, superimposition, masking, and a wildly-tracking camera accentuates the intensely emotional blending of camera actuality and poetic drama. The film was a spectacular hit throughout Europe, and Gance, hoping for an American success, took it across the Atlantic, where he presented it at a special screening in New York in 1921 for an appreciative audience that included D. W. Griffith and the Gish sisters. But the U.S. distributors mutilated J’accuse for its subsequent general release, even distorting its antiwar message into an endorsement of conventional militarist attitudes.
Gance’s American journey was sandwiched in between his work on his second great epic, La Roue, which he filmed during 1919-20 and completed final editing in preparation for its 1922 release by Pathé upon his return from the United States. A monumental production 32 reels long requiring three evenings for its original presentation, La Roue is a powerful drama of life among the railroad workers, rich in psychological characterization and symbolic imagery. To dramatize his story of a railroad mechanic’s tortured love for his adopted daughter, Gance elaborated his use of masking and superimposition and perfected his fast cutting into the rapid montage that would soon be adopted by Russian and Japanese silent filmmakers for whom La Roue was a seminal influence. Complex in its thematics, the film’s images animate machines and the forces of nature with a life and spirit of their own while the wheel ("la roue") of the film’s title becomes a metaphor for life itself. Gance’s remarkable symbolism is exemplified in the film’s conclusion: as the old railway mechanic dies quietly and painlessly in his mountain chalet, his daughter joins the local villagers outside in the snow in a circular farandole dance, a dance in which nature itself, in the form of clouds, participates. Shot entirely on location at the railroad yards in Nice and in the Alps, La Roue remains a work of extraordinary beauty and depth. Jean Cocteau said of the film, "There is the cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso," while Akira Kurosawa stated, "The first film that really impressed me was La Roue."
Gance climaxed his work in the silent era with Napoleon, an epic historical recreation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s early career during the French Revolution. A superspectacle, the film advanced the technique of cinematic language far beyond any single production of the decade. The definitive version originally ran over six hours in length, and its amazing innovations accomplished Gance’s intent of making the spectator part of the action. To create this effect, Gance utilizes rapid montage and the hand-held camera extensively. An example of his technique is the double tempète sequence in which shots of Bonaparte--on a small boat tossing in a stormy sea as huge waves splash across the screen--are intercut with a stormy session of the revolutionary Convention, at which the camera, attached to a pendulum, swings back and forth across the seething crowd. For the climax depicting Napoleon’s 1796 Italian campaign, Gance devised a special wide-screen process employing three screens and three projectors. He called his invention Polyvision, using the greatly expanded screen for both vast panoramas and parallel triptych images. As with La Roue, the film’s unusual length enables Gance to develop his narrative fully, peopled with numerous characters, both historical and fictional, who bring to life the epoch of the late 1700s.
The director began filming Napoleon in 1925 and finally unveiled his masterpiece to the world at a gala premiere at the Paris Opera in April 1927. Although many of those who saw Gance’s original cuts (both the six-hour version and a shorter one he supervised) recognized Napoleon as an unequaled artistic triumph, the film ultimately proved too technically advanced for the industry of its period. Napoleon was financed by private backers, including several wealthy Russian émigré industrialists in France. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which bought international distribution rights, presented the film in Europe in various mangled and mutilated versions. Their American release, shown as sound was sweeping the industry in 1929, ran only 72 minutes and eliminated all of Gance’s pyrotechnics. Film historian Kevin Brownlow’s later restoration would eventually establish for many Napoleon’s artistic preeminence. However, the film remains one of the cinema’s more controversial masterworks--and not only due to a technique and scope that broke all the rules of filmmaking, but also to Gance’s admiring depiction of the young Bonaparte. He portrayed him as an idealistic, visionary leader championing the French Revolution, an interpretation often characterized by critics as "fascistic," but a conception that belies an informed consideration of Gance’s personal history and beliefs, and one that ignores the fact that his 1927 film was only the first of a planned series of films on Napoleon’s life. In the succeeding films, he had intended to depict Napoleon drifting more and more away from his revolutionary beginnings when he became an emperor. The heroic portrayal of the young Bonaparte in the film he did make is very much in the democratic Romantic tradition of great writers like Byron, Hugo, and Heine, who had exalted the Man of Destiny as the very embodiment of revolutionary energy. That Gance should view with sympathy a leader who did much to liberate European society from aristocratic and feudal privileges should come as no surprise, given the director’s own "outsider" background. Gance’s radical technique is thus wedded to a radical vision of history at odds with the classical restraint which had long held both social organization and aesthetics in check. Further underscoring the director’s philosophy is his own memorable performance in the film as the "Archangel of the Revolution," the left-wing Jacobin leader, Saint-Just.
Gance’s American journey was sandwiched in between his work on his second great epic, La Roue, which he filmed during 1919-20 and completed final editing in preparation for its 1922 release by Pathé upon his return from the United States. A monumental production 32 reels long requiring three evenings for its original presentation, La Roue is a powerful drama of life among the railroad workers, rich in psychological characterization and symbolic imagery. To dramatize his story of a railroad mechanic’s tortured love for his adopted daughter, Gance elaborated his use of masking and superimposition and perfected his fast cutting into the rapid montage that would soon be adopted by Russian and Japanese silent filmmakers for whom La Roue was a seminal influence. Complex in its thematics, the film’s images animate machines and the forces of nature with a life and spirit of their own while the wheel ("la roue") of the film’s title becomes a metaphor for life itself. Gance’s remarkable symbolism is exemplified in the film’s conclusion: as the old railway mechanic dies quietly and painlessly in his mountain chalet, his daughter joins the local villagers outside in the snow in a circular farandole dance, a dance in which nature itself, in the form of clouds, participates. Shot entirely on location at the railroad yards in Nice and in the Alps, La Roue remains a work of extraordinary beauty and depth. Jean Cocteau said of the film, "There is the cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso," while Akira Kurosawa stated, "The first film that really impressed me was La Roue."
Gance climaxed his work in the silent era with Napoleon, an epic historical recreation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s early career during the French Revolution. A superspectacle, the film advanced the technique of cinematic language far beyond any single production of the decade. The definitive version originally ran over six hours in length, and its amazing innovations accomplished Gance’s intent of making the spectator part of the action. To create this effect, Gance utilizes rapid montage and the hand-held camera extensively. An example of his technique is the double tempète sequence in which shots of Bonaparte--on a small boat tossing in a stormy sea as huge waves splash across the screen--are intercut with a stormy session of the revolutionary Convention, at which the camera, attached to a pendulum, swings back and forth across the seething crowd. For the climax depicting Napoleon’s 1796 Italian campaign, Gance devised a special wide-screen process employing three screens and three projectors. He called his invention Polyvision, using the greatly expanded screen for both vast panoramas and parallel triptych images. As with La Roue, the film’s unusual length enables Gance to develop his narrative fully, peopled with numerous characters, both historical and fictional, who bring to life the epoch of the late 1700s.
The director began filming Napoleon in 1925 and finally unveiled his masterpiece to the world at a gala premiere at the Paris Opera in April 1927. Although many of those who saw Gance’s original cuts (both the six-hour version and a shorter one he supervised) recognized Napoleon as an unequaled artistic triumph, the film ultimately proved too technically advanced for the industry of its period. Napoleon was financed by private backers, including several wealthy Russian émigré industrialists in France. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which bought international distribution rights, presented the film in Europe in various mangled and mutilated versions. Their American release, shown as sound was sweeping the industry in 1929, ran only 72 minutes and eliminated all of Gance’s pyrotechnics. Film historian Kevin Brownlow’s later restoration would eventually establish for many Napoleon’s artistic preeminence. However, the film remains one of the cinema’s more controversial masterworks--and not only due to a technique and scope that broke all the rules of filmmaking, but also to Gance’s admiring depiction of the young Bonaparte. He portrayed him as an idealistic, visionary leader championing the French Revolution, an interpretation often characterized by critics as "fascistic," but a conception that belies an informed consideration of Gance’s personal history and beliefs, and one that ignores the fact that his 1927 film was only the first of a planned series of films on Napoleon’s life. In the succeeding films, he had intended to depict Napoleon drifting more and more away from his revolutionary beginnings when he became an emperor. The heroic portrayal of the young Bonaparte in the film he did make is very much in the democratic Romantic tradition of great writers like Byron, Hugo, and Heine, who had exalted the Man of Destiny as the very embodiment of revolutionary energy. That Gance should view with sympathy a leader who did much to liberate European society from aristocratic and feudal privileges should come as no surprise, given the director’s own "outsider" background. Gance’s radical technique is thus wedded to a radical vision of history at odds with the classical restraint which had long held both social organization and aesthetics in check. Further underscoring the director’s philosophy is his own memorable performance in the film as the "Archangel of the Revolution," the left-wing Jacobin leader, Saint-Just.
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