La Roue (1923)
La Roue (1923)
A Film by Abel Gance
2xDVD9 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 4:3 | 04:22:30 | 7,99 Gb + 6,37 Gb
Score AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps with English intertitles
Genre: Drama | France
A Film by Abel Gance
2xDVD9 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 4:3 | 04:22:30 | 7,99 Gb + 6,37 Gb
Score AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps with English intertitles
Genre: Drama | France
Sisif (Severin-Mars) is the kindly railroad engineer who adopts the orphan girl Norma (Ivy Close). He raises her as his own along with his son Elie (Pierre Magnier). When they are grown, Elie and Herson (Gabriele de Gravvone) are compelled to fight to the death on a mountain top over the love of Norma. Elie dies when he falls after losing his grip on a tree branch, and Norma is turned out by Sisif who blames her for the death of his only son. She marries Herson but is left a widow within the year. Sisif becomes a blind recluse and visits the sight of his son's death on the one-year anniversary. He arrives with the help of his guide dog. Norma returns to help Sisif but is again turned away by the bitter father. She secretly helps the old man until he dies in this sentimental melodrama.
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The greatest film experience of my life was watching Kevin Brownlow’s restoration of Abel Gance’s Napoleon in 2001. It was the closing night film at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (often called the Pordenone Silent Film Festival), shown at the Udine Opera House with a full orchestra under the baton of Carl Davis, who prepared and arranged the compilation score, and it ran for a mighty 5 1/2 hours, not including three intermissions (including a dinner break).
La Roue (1923)
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We won’t be seeing this anytime soon on video – Francis Ford Coppola has the distribution rights in the US and stands by the version of the film he edited into a shorter presentation to be shown with a score written by his father – but this week another Gance restoration debuts on DVD. The recently restored La Roue (1923) premiered on TCM a week ago at a running time of 4 1/2 hours, not as long as its original 32 reel version that premiered in France in a special two-night event, but at 20 reels certainly the most complete version seen since, as it was edited down for distribution across France and even further for U.S. distribution.
La Roue (1923)
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There really is no other director like Gance. He draws upon the full range of graphic effects, from irises to dramatic masking, double exposures to composites, and unleashes his arsenal within the first few minutes. But his technical mastery is in the service of the story, and he transforms the story of La Roue into an emotional epic. He is a master conductor who plays scenes like symphonies of feelings, continuing long past the narrative point has been established to express the emotional intensity of the characters and situations, and to add moments of pure grace to the mighty drama.
La Roue (1923)
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The performances are as dramatic as the effects, a little too dramatic and uncontrolled, to be honest. Séverin-Mars, as Sisif, the engineer, opens the film with a wild-eyed performance, young and intense and passionate, and quickly sinks into sad-sack pathos with just as much exaggeration. Ivy Close, the British actress who plays his adopted daughter, Norma (saved from a flaming train wreck in the blast of an opening scene) overplays the childlike dottiness of a teenage girl, playing the unbridled adolescent while all the men of the train yard eye her with desire. And Gabriel de Gravone, as Sisif’s son, is the tortured artist and the doting older brother from the first scene. Griffith would have tamped these actors down, at least a degree or two. Gance waits until the second half of the film, when it becomes a chamber drama set against the drama of the French alps, to pull his actors back from the brink.
La Roue (1923)
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It becomes a kind of visual opera by the end, the performances calming down as the images become more magnificent.
The restoration is quite beautiful and its clarity is thrown into relief when the film resorts (for brief passages) to 9.5mm footage for otherwise lost footage. And the orchestral score by Robert Israel is lovely, often drawing only upon small sections of the orchestra for character themes and quiet movements, then drawing upon the power of the full orchestra in other scenes.
La Roue (1923)
French director Abel Gance's reputation in America hinges almost entirely upon his delirious historical epic Napoléon (1927). Now, thanks to Flicker Alley (and Blackhawk Films, Lobster Film Studios and Film Preservation Associates), we can see another Gance masterpiece in something close to its original form for the first time in more than 80 years. La Roue (1923), first screened in a seven-plus-hour version over several nights, contained enough special effects and editing marvels to inspire generations of moviemakers in France, Russia and even Japan, according to William M. Drew's essay that comes with this two-disc set. English audiences, however, never got to see anything but severely truncated versions. Working from a variety of prints, Eric Lange and David Shepard have assembled a 270-minute version, beautifully tinted and for the most part exceptionally clear and sharp.
La Roue (1923)
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La Roue (Gance also wrote the script) focuses on the travails of Sisif (Séverin-Mars), a railroad engineer in the south of France. After a terrible accident, Sisif rescues a baby girl and raises her as his own. Sisif's own son, Elie, grows up thinking that he and Norma are brother and sister. Both father and son share a veiled incestuous urge for the winsome, playful Norma (British actress Ivy Close, who gambols and cavorts way too much). Eventually, the truth comes out; Norma marries a rich, villainous railroad executive; and Sisif and Elie endure much tortured self-reflection. After being blinded by a blast of steam, Sisif moves to a remote mountain redoubt with Elie; when Norma and her husband find them again, the climax turns into a literal cliffhanger, followed by a too-lengthy denouement.
La Roue (1923)
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The plot traffics in pure corn; the acting (especially Gabriel de Gravone's simpy, lovestruck Elie) often looks as dated as dinner-theater melodrama; and there is way too much comic relief. But visually, La Roue never disappoints. Gance and cinematographer Léonce-Henry Burel went on location to Nice, filming alongside the railroad tracks (and even underneath in a few thrilling shots) and on board the racing trains. The scenes of the engines pumping out vast billows of smoke and the flashing rails racing toward the horizon benefit from unalterable realism. In one of the best moments, Sisif, his thoughts roiled with guilt and desire, runs ahead of a pursuing locomotive at night, trapped in the pitiless glare of the headlight. Throughout, Gance uses a wide variety of vignetting techniques to concentrate our attention on the characters; more than once, the actors are isolated in tiny circles of light in the midst of a black screen, as though viewed through a microscope.
La Roue (1923)
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Gance works his title metaphor hard: the wheel is the wheel of the locomotive and the endless round of suffering that is human life. In the moments of greatest physical and psychological stress, the rapid-fire, staccato editing reaches the point of cutting in images frame by frame. But Gance also knew how to slow down-the last scene of the first half circles slowly around the distraught Sisif as he stands in the center of the railroad roundhouse and pivots to look at the locomotive bays. It is his farewell to a world he can never see again. La Roue is accompanied by an excellent rousing score by Robert Israel; extras include an illustrated booklet and an on-the-scenes minidocumentary about the making of the film. I don't know if I could recommend La Roue to a casual moviegoer, but this set is a treasure of inestimable value for anyone who has been seduced by the siren call of that fabled lost art form: the silent film.Michael S. Gant, MetroActive
La Roue (1923)
A revolutionary and influential film in its day, Abel Gance's Le Roue is a silent film of a particular unassailable vintage. This 1923 melodrama of the railroad has the breadth of a great novel and the tragedy of a classic play. Gance tells the simple story of a train conductor, his son, and the girl he secretly adopted, and the feelings of love and loss that erupt from hiding the girl's true identity from her. Shot on location and with a grand scope that would put even many of today's productions to shame, Le Roue may have a few quaint, rickety scenes, but its emotion and ambition still make a timeless impression. This new two-DVD set restores it to a four-and-a-half hour running time, and uses the best of several print sources to make one good looking transfer. As good cinema, and as one for the history books, we're ranking Le Roue as Highly Recommended.
La Roue (1923)
Extras: Short 'Around The Wheel'.
Thanks to cabiria21.
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