Gance, Abel

GANCE, Abel

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Nationality: French. Born: Paris, 25 October 1889. Education: Collège de Chantilly; Collège Chaptal, Paris, baccalaureate 1906. Served with Service Cinématographique et Photographique de l'Armée, 1917. Family: Married (second wife) actress Odette Vérité, 1933. Daughter: Clarisse (Mme. Jacques Raynaud). Career: Actor at Théâtre du Parc, Brussels, 1908–09; began selling screenplays to Gaumont, 1909; formed production company, Le Film Français, 1911; artistic director of Le Film d'Art, 1917; after death of first wife, travelled to United States, 1921; patented widescreen "Polyvision" process, 1926; patented "Perspective Sonore," stereophonic sound process, 1929; directed Marie Tudor for television, 1965; lived in Nice, worked on screenplay for Christophe Colomb project, first begun in 1939, 1970s; reassembled Napoléon premiered in New York, 1981. Awards: Gold Medal, Union Française des Inventeurs, and Cinérama Gold Medal, Société des Auteurs, 1952; Théâtre de l'Empire named for Gance, Paris, 1961; Grand prix national de Cinéma, 1974; César Award, 1980; Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur; Grand officier de l'ordre national du Merité, et des Arts et des Lettres. Died: In Paris, 10 November 1981.

Films as Director:

1911

La Digue, ou Pour sauver la Hollande (+ sc)

1912

Le Nègre blanc (+ sc, role); Il y a des pieds au plafond (+ sc); Le Masque d'horreur (+ sc)

1915

Un drame au Château d'Acre (Les Morts reviennent-ils? ) (+ sc); Ecce Homo (+ sc) (unfinished) (+ sc); Le Fleur des ruines (+ sc); L'Heroïsme de Paddy

1916

La Folie du Docteur Tube (+ sc); L'Enigme de dix heures (+ sc); Fioritures (La Source de beauté ) (+ sc); Le Fou de la falaise (+ sc); Ce que les flots racontent (+ sc); Le Périscope (+ sc): Barberousse (+ sc); Les Gaz mortels (Le Brouillard sur la ville ) (+ sc); Strass et compagnie (+ sc)

1917

Le Droit à la vie (+ sc); La Zone de la mort (+ sc); Mater Dolorosa (+ sc)

1918

La Dixième Symphonie (+ sc); Le Soleil noir (+ sc) (unfinished)

1919

J'Accuse (+ sc)

1923

La Roué (+ sc); Au secours! (+ sc)

1927

Napoléon (Napoléon vu par Abel Gance ) (+ sc)

1928

Marines et Cristeaux (+ sc) (experimental footage for "Polyvision")

1931

La Fin du monde (+ sc)

1932

Mater Dolorosa (+ sc)

1934

Poliche (+ sc); La Dame aux Camélias (+ sc); Napoléon Bonaparte (+ sc) (sound version, with additional footage)

1935

Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (+ sc); Lucrèce Borgia

1936

Un Grande Amour de Beethoven (The Life and Loves of Beethoven ) (+ sc); Jérome Perreau, héro des barricades The Queen and the Cardinal ); Le Voleur de femmes (+ sc)

1937

J'accuse (That They May Live ) (+ sc)

1939

Louise (+ co-sc); Le Paradis perdu (Four Flights to Love ) (+ co-sc)

1941

La Vénus aveugle (+ sc)

1942

Le Capitaine Fracasse (+ co-sc)

1944

Manolete (+ sc) (unfinished)

1954

Quatorze Juillet (+ sc); La Tour de Nesle (+ sc)

1956

Magirama (+ sc, co-pr) (demonstration of "Polyvision" in color)

1960

Austerlitz (co-d, + co-sc)

1964

Cyrano et d'Artagnan (+ co-sc)

1971

Bonaparte et la révolution (+ sc, co-pr)

Other Films:

1909

Le Portrait de Mireille (Perret) (sc); Le Glas du Père Césaire (+ sc); La Légende de l'arc-en-ciel (sc); Molière (Perret) (role)

1909/10

Some Max Linder short comedies (role as Max's brother)

1910

Paganini (sc); La Fin de Paganini (sc); Le Crime de Grand-père (Perret) (sc); Le Roi des parfums (sc); L'Aluminité (sc); L'Auberge rouge (sc); Le Tragique Amour de Mona Lisa (Capellani) (sc)

1911

Cyrano et D'Assoucy (Capellani) (sc); Un Clair de lune sous Richelieu (Capellani) (sc); L'Électrocuté (Morlhon) (sc)

1912

Une Vengeance d'Edgar Poe (Capellani) (sc); La Mort du Duc d'Enghien (Capellani) (sc); La Conspiration des drapeaux (sc); La Pierre philosophe (sc)

1914

L'Infirmière (Pouctal) (sc)

1920

L'Atre (Boudrioz) (pr)

1929

Napoléon auf St. Helena (Napoléon à Saint-Hélène ) (Pick) (sc)

1933

Le Maître de forges (Rivers) (sc, supervisor)

1953

Lumière et l'invention du cinématographe (Louis Lumière ) (Paviot) (commentary, narration)

1954

La Reine Margot (Dréville) (sc)

Publications

By GANCE: books—

J'Accuse, Paris, 1922.

Napoléon vu par Abel Gance, Paris, 1927.

La Roué, scénario original arrangé par Jean Arroy, Paris, 1930.

Prisme, Paris, 1930.

La Fin du Monde, scénario arrangé par Joachim Renez, Paris, 1931.

Mater Dolorosa, scénario original arrangé par Joachim Renez, Paris, 1932.

Napoléon, as seen by Abel Gance, edited by B. Ballard, London, 1990.

By GANCE: articles—

"Qu'est-ce que le cinématographe? Un sixième art," in Intelligence du cinématographe, by Marcel L'Herbier, Paris, 1946.

"Les nouveaux chapitres de notre syntaxe," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), October 1953.

"Départ vers la polyvision," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), December 1954.

"Entretien avec Jacques Rivette et François Truffaut," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), January 1955.

"The Kingdom of the Earth," in Film Culture (New York), December 1957.

"Film as Incantation: An Interview with Abel Gance," in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1974.

On GANCE: books—

Arroy, Jean, En tournant "Napoléon" avec Abel Gance, Paris, 1927.

Daria, Sophie, Abel Gance, hier et demain, Paris, 1959.

Icart, Roger, Abel Gance, Toulouse, 1960.

Brownlow, Kevin, The Parade's Gone By, New York, 1969.

Kramer, Steven, and James Welsh, Abel Gance, Boston, 1978.

Icart, Roger, Abel Gance; ou, Le Promethée foudroyé, Lausanne, 1983.

King, Norman, Abel Gance: A Politics of Spectacle, London, 1984.

Groppali, Enrico, Abel Gance, Florence, 1986.

On GANCE: articles—

Epstein, Jean, "Mon ami Gance," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), August/September 1955.

"Gance Issue" of L'Ecran (Paris), April/May 1958.

Lenning, Arthur, "Napoléon and La Roue," in The Persistence of Vision, edited by Joseph McBride, Madison, Wisconsin, 1968.

Brownlow, Kevin, "Bonaparte et la révolution," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1971/72.

Welsh, J.M., and S.P. Kramer, "Abel Gance's Accusation against War," in Cinema Journal (Evanston), Spring 1975.

Gilliatt, Penelope, in New Yorker, 6 September 1976.

Drew, W.M., "Abel Gance: Prometheus Bound," in Take One (Montreal), July 1978.

Nerguy, C., and Y. Alion, "Un Grand Amour de Beethoven," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 1 October 1978.

Brownlow, Kevin, "Abel Gance," in Film Dope (London), September 1979.

Allen, W., "Napoléon reconstructed," in Stills (London), Autumn 1981.

Obituary, in the New York Times, 11 November 1981.

Cluny, C.M., "Abel Gance: trop grand pour le cinéma?," in Cinéma (Paris), December 1981.

Lafaye, C., obituary, in Cinéma (Paris), January 1982.

Riley, B., obituary, in Film Comment (New York), January/February 1982.

Jeancolas, J.-P., "Abel Gance entre Napoléon et Philippe Pétain," in Positif (Paris), June 1982.

Icart, R., C. Lafaye, and L. Martin, "Tumultueux Abel Gance," in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), May 1983.

Icart, R., "Quand Abel Gance voulait travailler chez Franco," in Cahiers de la Cinémathèque (Paris), no. 38–39, Winter 1984.

King, Norman, "The Sounds of Silents," in Screen (London), May/June 1984.

Virmaux, A. and O., "Deux amis," in Cinématographe (Paris), November 1986.

Stojanov-Bigor, G., "Abel Gans," in Kinoizkustvo (Sofia, Bulgaria), vol. 44, no. 6, June 1989.

Virmaux, A., and O. Virmaux, "Quatre remarques sure le cycle Antoine," in Jeune Cinéma (Paris), no. 204, November-December 1990.

On GANCE: films—

Ford, Charles, and Jacques Guillon, Les Éloquents, France, 1956.

Kaplan, Nelly, Abel Gance, hier et demain (Abel Gance, Yesterday and Tomorrow), Paris, 1964.

Brownlow, Kevin, Abel Gance—The Charm of Dynamite, London, 1968.

* * *

Abel Gance's career as a director was long and flamboyant. He wrote his first scripts in 1909, turning to directing a couple of years later, and made his last feature, Cyrano et d'Artagnan, in 1964. As late as 1971 he re-edited a four-hour version of his Napoleon footage to make Bonaparte et la révolution, and he lived long enough to see his work again reach wide audiences.

Gance's original aspirations were as a playwright, and throughout his life he treasured the manuscript of his verse tragedy La Victoire de Samothrace, written for Sarah Bernhardt and on the brink of production when the war broke out in 1914. If Gance's beginnings in the film industry he then despised were unremarkable, he showed his characteristic audacity and urge for experimentation with an early work, the unreleased La Folie du Docteur Tube, which made great use of distorting lenses, in 1916. He learned his craft in a dozen or more films during 1916 and 1917—the best remembered of which are Les Gaz mortels, Barberousse, and Mater dolorosa. He reached fresh heights with a somewhat pretentious and melodramatic study of a great and suffering composer, La Dixième Symphonie. Even more significant was his ambitious and eloquent antiwar drama, J'Accuse, released in 1919. These films established him as the leading French director of his generation and gave him a preeminence he was not to lose until the coming of sound.

The 1920s saw the release of just three Gance films. If Au secours!, a comedy starring his friend Max Linder, is something of a lighthearted interlude, the other two are towering landmarks of silent cinema. La Roue began as a simple melodramatic tale, but in the course of six months scripting and a year's location shooting, the project took on quite a new dimension. In the central figure of Sisif, Gance seems to have struggled to create an amalgam of Oedipus, Sisyphus, and Lear. Meanwhile portions of the film that were eventually cut apparently developed a social satire of such ferocity that the railway unions demanded its excision. The most expensive film as yet made in France, its production was again delayed when the death of Gance's wife caused him to abandon work and take a five-month trip to the United States.

Like his previous work, La Roue had been conceived and shot in the pre-1914 style of French cinema, which was based on a conception of film as a series of long takes, each containing a significant section of the action, rather than as a succession of scenes made up of intercut shots of different lengths, taken from varying distances. But in Hollywood, where he met D.W. Griffith, Gance came into contact with the new American style of editing. Upon his return to France, Gance spent a whole year reediting his film. On its release in 1923 La Roue proved to be one of the stunning films of the decade. Even in its shortened version—comprising a prologue and four parts—the film had a combined running time of nearly eight hours.

Gance's imagination and energy at this period seemed limitless. Almost immediately he plunged into an even vaster project whose title clearly reflects his personal approach, Napoléon va par Abel Gance. If La Roue was particularly remarkable for its editing (certain sequences are classic moments of French 1920s avant-garde experimentation), Napoléon attracted immediate attention for its incredibly mobile camerawork, created by a team under the direction of Jules Kruger. Napoléon thus emerges as a key masterpiece of French cinema at a time when visual experimentation took precedence over narrative and the disorganization of production offered filmmakers the chance to produce extravagant and ambitious personal works within the heart of the commercial industry. Gance's conception of himself as visionary filmmaker and of Napoleon as a master of his destiny points to the roots of Gance's style in the nineteenth century and his romantic view of the artist as hero. The scope of Gance's film, bursting into triple screen effects at the moment of Napoleon's climactic entry into Italy, remains staggering even today.

The 1920s in France was a period of considerable creative freedom. Given this atmosphere, a widespread urge to experiment with the full potential of the medium was apparent. If the freedom came from the lack of a tightly controlled studio system, the desire to explore new forms of filmic expression can be traced to a reaction against the situation imposed by Pathé and Gaumont before 1914, when film was seen as a purely commercial product, underfinanced and devoid of artistic or personal expression. This had been the cinema in which Gance had made his debut, and he was one of those striving most forcefully in the 1920s both to increase the possibilities for personal expressiveness and to widen the technical scope of cinema. He pioneered new styles of cutting and camerawork, as well as widescreen and multiscreen techniques.

It is ironic, then, that the advent of the greatest technical innovation of the period left Gance stranded. The explanation for this lies less in the irrelevance of sound to his personal vision of the medium—he was pioneering a new stereophonic system with La Fin du monde as early as 1929—than the fact that new forms of tighter production control were implemented as a result of the greater costs associated with sound filmmaking.

The 1930s emerge as a sad era for a man accustomed to being in the forefront of the French film industry. Gance, whose mind had always teemed with new and original projects, was now reduced to remaking his old successes: sound versions of Mater dolorosa in 1932, Napoléon Bonaparte in 1934, and J'accuse in 1937. Otherwise, the projects he was allowed to make were largely adaptations of fashionable stage dramas or popular novels: Le Maître de forges, Poliche, La Dame aux camélias, and Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre. In the late 1930s he was able to treat subjects in which his taste for grandly heroic figures is again apparent: Savonarola in Lucrèce Borgia and the great composer—played by Harry Baur—in Un Grand Amour de Beethoven, but by 1942, when he made Le Capitaine Fracasse, Gance's career seemed to have come to an end.

Though a dozen years were to pass before he directed another feature film, Gance maintained his incredible level of energy. Refusing to be beaten, he continued his experiments with "polyvision" which were to culminate in his Magirama spectacle. He eventually made three further features, all historical dramas in which his zest, if not the old towering imagination, is still apparent: La Tour de Nesle, Austerlitz, and Cyrano et d'Artagnan. The French 1920s cinema of which Gance is the major figure has consistently been undervalued by film historians, largely because its rich experimentation with visual style and expressiveness was not accompanied by an similar concern with the development of film narrative. Gance's roots were in the nineteenth–century romantic tradition, and despite his literary background, he, like his contemporaries, was willing to accept virtually any melodramatic story that would allow him to pursue his visual interests. For this reason French 1920s work has been marginalized in accounts of film history that see the growth of storytelling techniques as the central unifying factor. The rediscovery of Gance's Napoléon in the 1980s, though—thanks largely to twenty years of effort by Kevin Brownlow—has made clear to the most skeptical the force and mastery achieved in the years preceding the advent of sound, and restored Gance's reputation as a master of world cinema.

—Roy Armes