London After Midnight

[Welles Fan]

Is La Roue the one that involves a train-wreck climax with a Gance's famous frenetic editing?

I remember some mention of it in the Gance chapter of The Parade's Gone By by Kevin Brownlow, but I may be confusing it with another of his films. Guess Napoleon (@ six hours originally-and the first of a planned six-part series!) was not Gance's only really looooong movie.

Also, Gance's WWI epic J'accuse! sounds interesting (though I don't believe it was a marathin movie).

[Harvey Chartrand]

Thirty-seven years after La Roue, Abel Gance directed Orson Welles in Austerlitz (1960), a detailed account of Napoleon's greatest military victory — against the Russians in a field near Austerlitz, Austria (now in the Czech Republic). By 1960, 71-year-old Gance had lost his touch. I defy anyone to sit through Austerlitz without frequent fast-forwarding. It is an interminable series of static tableaux of people talking. A great cast is wasted — Jack Palance, Martine Carol, Vittorio De Sica, Claudia Cardinale, Leslie Caron, Jean Marais, Michel Simon, Jean-Louis Trintingnant and Rossano Brazzi, among others. Wearing yet another putty nose, Welles has a cameo as Robert Fulton, the American inventor of the submarine and steam-powered ships, in a scene with Pierre Mondy, who played Napoleon. Austerlitz was also heavily cut, from 166 minutes to 122 minutes for its brief American release. In this case, the cuts were a blessing.

[Welles Fan]

Harvey: I agree that Austerlitz is a dud-and I am a huge Napoleonic buff! In fact, I am probably as interested in the Napoleonic era as I am in film. I liked Pierre Mondy as Nap, and Claudia Cardinale was incredibly gorgeous as Nap's sister, but the rest is a big snoozer. I could not even follow the battle, and I am quite familiar with what happened @ Austerlitz.

I remember reading Kevin Brownlow's account of the restoration of Gance's Napoleon. In the book, Brownlow gives a history of the film, and tells how fragments were found here and there, culminating in the 1981 restoration/re-release of the film. Brownlow eventually got to meet the aging, ailing Gnce near the end of his life. Gance was working on a new version of Napoleon, with sound sequences added, and with Gance repeating his part as St. Just (even though in the original silent film he was a young handsome guy, and in the new stuff he was, like, 90). Apparently, Gance was not particularly interested in the resugance of interest in his 1927 film, or the re-discovery of so much footage. He seemed a bit miffed that people were interested in something he did long ago, rather than his "new and improved" version of the film. I guess Gance was in denial about how his best days were behind him.

BTW-a Napoleon/Welles movie I do admire is Sergei Bondarchuk's 1970 epic Waterloo. This is a reasonably acurate recreation of the most famous battle in history, and features some of the greatest battle footage ever filmed. Bondarchuk was fresh from his success with War and Peace, and Waterloo was filmed in Russia in the same style as the Tolstoy film. Rod Steiger was great, IMO as the Emperor (particularly the farewell to the Guard as he leaves for exile in Elba), and Christopher Plummer was a fine Wellington. Welles had a couple of good scenes as Louis XVIII near the beginning. The Russian version of the movie was nearly 4 hrs. long, and included the battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras. The cut we have today only has the main battle of June 18. I doubt we will ever see the uncut version, but at least you can see the widescreen version of the final cut on Region 2 DVDs. If you can get past the poorly written first scene of Napoleon's abdication, the rest of the film is quite good. I think this move is the epic that Austerlitz should have been.

[fantomas]

In the discussion at the University of Southern California which was filmed in 1981 for FILMING THE TRIAL someone asks Orson about Abel Gance who died a couple of days ago. Orson's answer: "I'm much more interested in movies about people. I don't think he made one".
The most complete reconstruction of LA ROUE was done in 2001. It lasts 283 minutes, is partly tinted and toned, and even contains hand colored effects. Like NAPOLEON it's a very looooooong movie...

[Harvey Chartrand]

Abel Gance
August 14, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Not even in the good old pre-war days when Germany was looked upon as a
possible business and social companion, were there so many foreign film
producers as we have had with us this Summer. Every boat brings an influx of
foreign competitors, all of them prepared to exploit their motion pictures.
After meeting most of them and classifying them as to their place in this
great cinema world, we are forced to admit Abel Gance brings an agreeable
personality not often found in this drab workaday hemisphere, where the
pursuit of gold so often robs a man of his native charm.
Of course Mr. Gance comes to us from Paris with the halo of a playwright
and poet. He is not essentially a motion picture producer, combining rather
his film perquisites with his reputation as one of France's rising young
dramatists. In the course of four months he has succeeded in establishing
himself in New York in a manner that most foreigners would consider a feat in
four years. But that is due to the Gance personality--which is a tangible
thing--a force no one can gainsay after meeting the maker of "J'Accuse."
In was in fact "J'Accuse" that first brought Abel Gance to America.
That he came for three weeks and remained four months speaks well of our
country. His purpose originally was to place "J'Accuse" on the market. This
he succeeded in accomplishing by virtue of a contract with United Artists.
Still he lingers, impelled this time by a desire to see a Broadway
presentation of his picture, when it opens at the Strand later this month.
After seeing "J'Accuse" and Mr. Gance's treatment of the war, a subject
that has perhaps suffered from clumsy interpretation more than any event in
recent years, one instinctively knows there is something in this young French
producer that is not ordinary. He thinks in a plane not usual in our best
motion picture circles, and he understands the spiritual power of the cinema.
His idea is to portray on the screen what the eye cannot see--to put it more
simply, to give people something to think about and not to have their mental
labors performed for them.
These things he told me over the luncheon table with the aid of his
efficient secretary, Pierre. At times lapsing into his own French tongue he
told something of his early life in Paris. His love of literature was born
with him, and at the age most boys were devouring their "Nick Carter" dime
novels he was reading Shakespeare, Goethe, Corneille and Hugo. Some times he
dipped into Ibsen and Tolstoi, broadening out his literary foundation day by
day until he acquired a speaking acquaintance with all these famous writers.
A familiarity with these authors one would not think would inspire a
youth to leave home, still about this time young Gance ran away to Brussels.
He hadn't any money and he had to eat. A chance to become an actor was
offered him and he accepted it, not because it appealed to him but because
gentlemen as well as ladies must live. This little flier before the
footlights gave him an opportunity to keep in touch with the drama. As it
turned out later it became an excellent preparatory school for what was to
follow.
The young Frenchman about this time changed his mode of mental attack
and feasted on the philosophers, choosing Nietzsche, Confucius, Schopenhauer
and others of this school for his daily diet. And Mr. Gance hasn't forgotten
his philosophers; he talks about them quite as intelligently as he does about
motion pictures, uniting the two in an amazing fashion, although we do not
usually think of Schopenhauer and motion pictures as having any relative
association.
About this time motion pictures appeared on the horizon and he accepted
a job to write scenarios. Mr. Gance said when he began to make pictures to
the tune of a time clock he found the same difficulties that we have here--
a demand that all screen stories have a happy ending regardless of logic.
His only hope was that one day he would have a chance to produce a film
without all these obstacles, and finally one day along came Louis Nalpas, at
that time manager of the Film d'Art, France's most important film company,
with the very chance he wanted.
At the end of three days Mr. Gance was ready to produce "Mater Dolorosa"
from his own scenario. That it is one of the most successful films ever made
in Europe and shows the young man was born with a dramatic instinct that
needed only a little cultivation to encourage, a little experience to bring
out his latent talent as a producer.
Of course, he has followed "Mater Dolorosa" with other productions, and
while making pictures as he believes they should be made he has taken time to
write two stage plays. One is a mystery play, "La Dame du Lac," a drama of
the Middle Ages. The other "La Victoire de Somothrace," a tragedy, in five
acts will be produced at the Comedie Francais. To the Frenchman having a
play produced at the Comedie Francais is like an American having an opera
accepted at the Metropolitan Opera House--it has the same significance.
A contest held by the Comedia, a Paris newspaper, shows how Mr. Gance
stands in his own home town. The purpose of this contest was to determine
the most popular pictures in Paris. "The Cheat" received seventy-six votes,
Chaplin seventy-two and then came four of Mr. Gance's pictures, "J'Accuse,"
"The Tenth Symphony," "Mater Dolorosa" and "The Zone of Death," proving it is
not a case of one production that induces the admiration of France's output
of Gance pictures.
Although Mr. Gance has received a very cordial invitation to remain in
New York and produce his next three--"Ecce Homo," "The End of the World" and
"The Kingdom of Earth"--he evades this issue very politely by remarking he
loves America but hasn't decided yet whether or not he will make pictures
here. He is young, only 30, and yet with a future that impresses his
admirers as being one of the pivots that will turn the tread of film art in
the proper direction. He is ambitious, he is eager and he is enthusiastic--
this with his personality and his ability should make it possible for him to
achieve what he desires--a chance to redeem the screen from the banalities of
life, to show things as they are, and use some of the terrific power he says
he knows the motion picture offers. It has always been his plan to develop
social idea--a psychological situation--doing this gives him a field in the
broad area of the cinema possibilities almost untouched. After hearing him
talk and seeing "J'Accuse" it is no fulsome praise to say he will do those
things--he is doing them. He is taking the weak and heretofore undeveloped
side of pictures, the spiritual, mental side, and giving them the attention
they should have if the new art is to endure.