Abel Gance is Film History!

...silencio

"Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films . . . all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions . . . await their exposed resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the gate"

--- Abel Gance (1927)
from Le Temps de l'image est venu. L'Art cinematographique*, Vol. 2, pp. 94

Kevin Brownlow as a film historian...


La Roue (1922) with Kristin Thompson

At the rate from one to ten, ten being the highest admiration, and one being the opposite, disregarding post-structuralist condition of binary opposites (dear lord), I would rate Abel Gance's works a ten, the highest level, mainly for his contributions to the development of the film language: the ever eponymous camera movements of Napoleon (1927) and the superpositions and influential editing in La Roue (1922). The last three directors that I gave a ten for admiration is of course another French director of the French Impressionist Era, Jean Renoir, the Japanese Zen master, Yasujiro Ozu, and the Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami. Of course, Andrei Tarkovsky is a nine and Akira Kurosawa is a nine and a half. In whatever aspect Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) has become the 'it' of silent cinema, La Roue is arguably the most original to attempt the style, as they call it 'the Soviet Montage'. Kevin and Kristin discusses further the notion of both the camera movement/placement and the famous cut of Abel Gance. For the meantime, enjoy the videos and some films of Gance below!

La Folie du Docteur Tube (1915)
notice the distortion of the lens to enunciate hallucination
This is way to early for Inception (2010)


J'accuse (1919)
An Anti-war silent film of Gance that propelled his career to heights.

Excerpt from Napoleon (1927)
Gance's masterpiece!

Some Presentation

Some links to Abel Gance:

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art In the Mechanical Age of Reproduction [PDF]

Monograph to Abel Gance and Napoleon (1927) by Philip Kemp on World Film Directors [PDF]

Roger Icart, "Abel Gance, auteur et ses films alimentaires", in 1895, n°31, (Abel Gance, nouveaux regards), 2000. pp.81-87. [in French]

A collection of readings from Shooting Down Pictures on La Roue (1923)

TSPDT Abel Gance's Page

Interview of Louella Parson's with Directors (scroll down for Abel Gance)

Film Reference Entry of Abel Gance

A fat article on Abel Gance by William M. Andrew


Ciao!
****

4th International Silent Film Festival

...is libre!

main announcement from Goethe Institut
download film program here [right click-"save link as"]

You might wonder what local or foreign cinemas today exhibits the art and glory of silent cinema, the bygone age of film where L'Age d'Or (1930) and Metropolis (1927) are equivalent to Salo or 120 Days of Sodom (1975) and Ironman 2 (2010) of contemporary cinema respectively. We'll, when you look at this list, you will notice that the only silent film festival in Asia will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday at Shang Cineplex -EDSA here at Manila. Epoy and me will be attending the 830PM screening of August 28 and hopefully, Sani will come along. I am inviting all cinephiles, pseudo-cinephiles, cinephile-wannabe and non-cinephiles to attend this unique cinematic event and sit with us.

4th International Silent Film Festival - Manila
28 - 29 Aug 2010
Shang Cineplex Cinema 2, Shangri-la Plaza, EDSA cor Shaw Blvd., Mandaluyong City
Free admission

Live performance by: Caliph8, Radio Active Sago Project, Tanglaw, Out of Body Special

Saturday, August 28
4:00 PM Treaser Performace at the Atrium by:
Italy | Caliph8
Japan | Radio Active Sago Project
Instituto Cervantes | Tanglaw
Goethe Institut | Out of Body Special
6:30 PM Assunta Spina, Italy | Caliph8
8:30 PM Kodakara Sodo (Kid Connection), Japan | Radio Active Sago Project

Sunday, August 29:
3:00 PM La Bodega (Wine Cellars), Spain | Tanglaw
5:00 PM Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City) | Out of Body Special

Ciao!

Berlin: A Symphony of a Great City
is one of my favorites! Juiciest avant-garde filmmaking!

****

THREE SONGS ABOUR LENIN [1934]

how i love cinema...

[top photo from here]




I wonder how my coffee tastes after watching Dziga Vertov's Three Songs about Lenin (1934). A smile, fundamental to all things, and a comforting yet voluminous feeling of joy composed the whole of my emotional state. There is, in a way, a revelation in all this. That cinema is a methodical way of documenting reality and that this has been a home for many filmmakers. Vertov goes further when he compared man to machines saying:

"In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people... I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see"

Vertov has a poetic eye, i suppose this might be one's comment when one look at his frames (see images below). Though the film was shot a year after Pudovkin's Deserter (1933) --- probably the last of the Soviet Montage kind (1924 - 1930), it still remains true to its origins. Thus, editing, which is so fundamental today, is much of an art, and perhaps central to Three Songs. Superimpositions, juxtopositions, and capacity to encapsulate momentary pauses and chaos dominate the editing style of Three Songs. The quality of the images is rich with symbolic overtones, and often 'faces' (some close-ups are shown below) draws sympathetic response to audiences.

I never seen Lenin filled with such humanity and character!



PS. My coffee tastes better!


Ciaofck!
***