Abel Gance & J'accuse: Cinematic Pacifism & Filmic Poetry

Abel Gance & J’accuse

Cinematic Pacifism & Filmic Poetry

Abel Gance, 1889-1981

Setting the Stage

Still Life with Bowl and FruitPicasso, 1912

Femme devant sa fenetreFernand Leger, 1923

Inception of a Film

Abel Gance1889 - 1981

“I pulled myself up short and said, ‘Why are people making films which are nothing but events, when they have at their disposal such a marvelous medium for psychological stories? They go on making films about people chasing each other, killing each other or trying to commit suicide, but why not films which show feelings instead of merely action?’”

- Abel Gance, 1960

La Folie du Dr. Tube (1915)

Jean

Francois

Technical innovation

Cinematic Poetry

The First Anti-War Film

TECHNICAL INNOVATION

Close-Ups

“Don’t take your camera too close. you know you’re supposed to show the whole of your actors, so you can see their gestures.

“What are these huge pictures supposed to mean? They’ll show up all the faults in the face. you’ll have people panicking in the cinema. They’ll make for the exits!”

- Louis Nalpas (Gance’s producer), 1915

Dynamic Lighting

Traveling Shots

Traveling Shots

Rapid Editing

Cinematic Poetry

A Bag of Tricks

Is it Poetry?

• Ode

• Sonnet

• Haiku

• Repetition

• Rhyme

• Rhythm

• Symbolism

• Metaphor

• Irony

Poetic Elements: Rhythm

Poetic Elements: Symbolism & Metaphor

Hands Going to War

Poetic Elements: Repetition

Jean as a Poet

Ode to the Sun

Ode to the Sun (repeated)

The First Anti-War Film

Soldiers’ Letters

The weather is mild and the morning indifferent. The dead won’t hold back the spring. - A Soldier’s Letter

If these letters reach anyone, may they instill in the honest heart a horror of the infamy of those responsible for this war. - A Soldier’s Letter

Darling mama -If you receive no more letters from me after this one, tell yourself that your son has left this world for a country without postmen, but that he still thinks of you night and day.- A Soldier’s Letter

Soldiers’ Letters

“J’accuse for me was not just a film. I felt that I must use what I had left of my strength and health to make it. I was very ill at the time. When I saw the horrors of war and that all my best friends were dead - I had ten good friends and all were killed except one. I had a feeling of frenzy to use this new medium, the cinema, to show the world the stupidity of war.” - Abel Gance, 1965

The Human Toll

The Battle of Verdun

The Dead Awake

“How I would like to see all those killed in the war rising up one night to visit their countries, their homes, to see if their sacrifice was worth anything at all. The war would stop of its own accord, horrified by its own awfulness.” - Abel Gance, 1917

Reception of the Film

“J’accuse forms one of the most terrible indictments against war which it is possible to imagine. But the effect is not produced by the insistent horrors and sheer frightfulness. It is obtained by the emphasis of simple, natural humanity.” - Kine Weekly, 1919.

“If this film had been shown in every country and in every town in the world in 1913, then perhaps there would have been no war.”

- Prague Newspaper, 1919

Abel Gance in Times Square, 1921

Abel Gance and D.W. Griffith, 1921

GANCE AFTER J’ACCUSE

Napoleon, Abel Gance, 1927

Napoleon, Abel Gance, 1927

Where to Go from Here

Where to Go From Here

Where to Go From Here

Thank you!