Abel Gance

 Abel Gance



J'accuse (1919)

La Roue (1923)

Napoleon (1927)



RANKED:


3. La Roue (1923)


After the massive success of "J'accuse," Abel Gance went on to make another innovative effort, "La Roue." The film centers on a railway worker who ends up falling for his adoptive daughter. His life is rough, and his daughter is the only brightness in his dark world. The wheel from the film's title is symbolic of the grinding wheels of life, constantly pressing you to your breaking point.




2. J'accuse (1919)


In depicting the horrors of war with his 1919 film "J'accuse," Abel Gance was able to capture the national temperament. The war had left France bitter, resentful, and traumatized. "J'accuse" takes these feelings and amplifies them through the fallout of a love triangle. In the triangle, one member ends up captured and raped, another ends up insane, and another dead. One of the most impressive sequences is one in which fallen soldiers rise up from the dead to accuse the living of taking their deaths for granted. What made the sequence all the more haunting was the fact that 80% of those soldiers died in the following weeks of the war. In many ways, "J'accuse" has the ability to make you face reality.




1. Napoleon (1927)


Perhaps the most technically innovative film of Abel Gance's career just also happens to be one of the most innovative and epic films ever made by any filmmaker. "Napoleon" is epic in many ways, besides its 5- and 1/2-hour runtime. The film takes all of the filmmaking techniques employed at the time and combines them into one, singular kaleidoscopic vision. The film tells the story of the titular Napoleon's rise from childhood to his invasion of Italy. To tell this story, Gance parallels his titular character's ambition by reaching heights of filmmaking techniques never reached before. His fluid, hand-held cameras, his fast-cutting, close-ups, point-of-view shots, and most importantly, his invention of widescreen/panoramic shots all coming together to create a mosaic of one man's life. Nothing had ever been seen before in the history of film and nothing since has come close to matching the ambition of this production. 











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