Abel Gance Trailers
Abel Gance et son Napoléon TrailerBonaparte et la révolution TrailerAbel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite Trailer
Abel Gance was a French film director, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and Napoléon (1927).
He was born in Paris in 1889. In 1909, he acted in his first film. He also wrote scenarios, and often sold them to Gaumont. During this period he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, fatal at the time, but he recovered. In 1911, with some friends he established a production company, Le Film Français, and began directing his own films.
With the outbreak of WW I, rejected by the army on medical grounds, he started writing and directing for a new film company, Film d'Art until 1918, making over a dozen successful films. Charles Pathé underwrote his next film, J'accuse (1919), in which Gance confronted the waste and suffering which the war had brought.
In 1920, he developed La Roue. He brought an unprecedented level of energy and imagination to the technical realization of his story, employing elaborate editing techniques and innovative use of rapid cutting which made the film highly influential. The finished film ran for nearly nine hours, but was edited down for distribution.
In 1921, Gance visited America to promote J'accuse. He met D. W. Griffith, whom he had long admired. He was also offered a contract with MGM but turned it down.
He then embarked on his greatest project, a six-part life of Napoléon. Only the first part was completed, tracing his early life, through the Revolution, up to the invasion of Italy, but even this occupied a vast canvas with meticulously recreated historical scenes and scores of characters. The film was full of experimental techniques, combining rapid cutting, hand-held cameras, superimposition of images, and, in wide-screen sequences, shot using a system he called Polyvision needing triple cameras (and projectors), achieved a spectacular panoramic effect, including a finale in which the outer two film panels were tinted blue and red, creating a widescreen image of a French flag. The original version ran for around 6 hours. A shortened version received a triumphant première at the Paris Opéra in April 1927.
Throughout his life he kept returning to Napoléon, editing his footage, and as a result the original 1927 film was lost from view for decades. The dedicated work of the film historian Kevin Brownlow produced a five-hour version, still incomplete but fuller than anyone had seen since the 1920s. It was presented at the Telluride Film Festival in 1979, and the occasion brought a belated triumph to Gance's career, and made his name known to a worldwide audience.
In the assessment of Kevin Brownlow, "...[Abel Gance] made a fuller use of the medium than anyone before or since". As well as his multiscreen ventures with Polyvision, he explored the use of superimposition of images, extreme close-ups, fast rhythmic editing, and he made the camera mobile in unorthodox ways – hand-held, mounted on wires or a pendulum, or even strapped to a horse. He also made early experiments with the addition of sound to film, and with filming in color and in 3-D. There were few aspects of film technique that he did not seek to incorporate in his work, and his influence was acknowledged by contemporaries and later by the French New Wave film-makers.
Most Popular Abel Gance Trailers
Total trailers found: 56
04 October 1928
A stranger called Allan goes to the House of Usher. He is the sole friend of Roderick Usher, who lives in the eerie house with his sick wife Madeleine.
18 March 1955
France, the beginning of the XIV century. Every night, Queen Margaret of Burgundy and her two sisters arrange orgies, to which beautiful nobles are invited.
25 April 1919
The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.
25 November 1954
Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Médicis, celebrates her wedding with Henri de Navarre.
27 October 1939
In pre-World Ward I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre LeBlanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant.
19 June 1943
Out of love for an actress, Isabelle, the Baron de Sigognac joins a traveling troop en route to Paris.
14 September 1941
Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus) is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation.
16 April 1939
What was it about opera diva Grace Moore that attracted the attention of filmdom's top directors? Moore's 1937 American movie vehicle When You're in Love had been directed by Josef Von Sternberg; two years later, her French starrer Louise was helmed by no less than Abel Gance, who a decade earlier had revolutionized the "historical epic" genre with the awesome Napoleon.
23 January 1938
After serving in the trenches of World War I, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war.
20 December 1935
French silent film pioneer Abel Gance directs this 1935 classic about Lucrezia Borgia, her brother, Cesare.
24 November 1972
Abel Gance's 1971 sound edition of his epic 1927 'Napoleon', which contains much of the silent original, with new material shot and added in both 1965 and 1971, and with sound synchronization from both the 1932 reissue and this version.
24 May 1912
A mad sculptor, searching for the perfect realization of "the mask of horror", places himself in front of a mirror after smearing blood over himself with the glass of an oil lamp.
06 January 1933
One of the most popular melodrama films directed by Abel Gance. A paranoide, fanatical and obsessively jealous husband obducts his own son to bully his wife.
07 November 1929
Napoleon at Saint Helena (German: Napoleon auf Sankt Helena) is a 1929 German silent historical film directed by Lupu Pick and starring Werner Krauss, Hanna Ralph and Albert Bassermann.
02 January 1923
One of two peasant brothers in love with the same woman escapes his grim country life and pursues a career as a Parisian sculptor.
10 January 1927
A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.
30 November 1933
A young noblewoman is unhappy about needing to marry the village ironmaster for financial reasons, but later comes to appreciate her husband.
10 September 1910
A film about the life of Molière (1622-1673).
06 March 1917
Hardly one of French filmmaker Abel Gance's masterpieces, The Torture of Silence nevertheless has more dramatic and psychological value than your average romantic-triangle tale.
30 March 1938
The woman thief evades a young lady who is onto his game, but then tries his wiles elsewhere on a married woman by attempting to compromise and ruin the husband she is happy with.
05 November 1935
A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.
22 November 1935
A hero of the Paris streets is recruited for a conspiracy against Mazarin in the court of the King, but he reveals the subversive plot to Anne of Austria.
14 July 1953
French documentary short film.
02 November 1934
Alexandre Dumas' romantic novel Lady of the Camelias (more popularly known as Camille) was filmed twice in 1953, first in Argentina, then in France.
01 January 1916
Le périscope is a 1928 film
13 April 1917
A journalist attempt to stop a mysterious criminal : "Barbe rousse".
01 January 1915
Guards are posted to protect various important figures who are threatened with a phone call, that by 10 p.
01 May 1915
Un drame au château d'Acre is a 1915 silent short
01 January 1916
Le fou de la falaise is a 1916 silent film
31 December 1930
A short silent documentary on the making of the 1931 Abel Gance directed film, "La Fin du Monde".
21 February 1935
Maxime de Champcey, a bankrupt marquis, is hired by the wealthy Laroque and falls for his daughter Marguerite.
17 June 1924
Max accepts a wager that he cannot remain in a haunted castle for one hour (11 PM to midnight) without crying for help.
22 October 1964
Duelist and poet Cyrano de Bergerac and musketeer d'Artagnan meet and team up to stop the conspiracy against King Louis XIII of France.
14 October 1923
Blaise Cendrars' AUTOUR DE LA ROUE (1923), a behind-the-scenes short documenting the production.
01 March 1956
Magirama version, which is one of the four segments of the Magirama program, designed to illustrate the expressive possibilities of director Abel Gance's creation, Polyvision and Sonore Perspective, which used three screens to present a drama of simultaneous images.
01 January 1928
Marines et cristeaux is a silent film from 1928
01 January 1914
L'infirmière is a 1914 silent film.
01 September 1916
Hopson, a prestigious scientist, studies the effect of snake venom to cure many diseases of mankind. His son enlists in the army when the Great War breaks out.
01 January 1911
La digue is a 1911 silent film
17 June 1960
Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.
17 February 1923
Sisif, a railwayman, saves a young girl named Norma orphaned by a train crash and raises her as his own daughter alongside his son, Elie.
23 January 1931
The plot concerns a comet hurling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions to people on the impending disaster.
26 March 1984
This documentary focuses on the making of the 235-minute, silent epic Napoleon, the masterpiece of French director/writer/actor Abel Gance.
21 April 1958
A portmanteau work in four segments,designed to illustrate the expressive possibilities of director Abel Gance,s creation, Polyvision, which preceded the American invention of Cinerama, and used three screens to present a drama of simultaneous images.
01 January 1909
Le portrait de Mireille is a 1909 short film
01 January 1915
L'héroïsme de Paddy is a 1915 silent film
15 January 1937
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
27 July 1934
Didier Méreuil, affectionately called Poliche, is in love with Rosine, a beautiful girl, so he does everything to please her.
01 November 1918
Composer Enrid Damor knows nothing of the past life of his new wife Eve Dinant : she lived as a debauchee with an adventurer, Fred Ryce.
01 January 1968
BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.
12 October 1917
French silent film by Abel Gance. Considered lost.
01 January 1915
A scientist develops a powder that he believes will have the effect of distorting reality for those who take it.
01 January 1963
The life and work of Abel Gance as told by himself. Includes extracts from many of his films and considers his contribution to the cinema.
05 January 1917
A young girl marries a financier knowing he has only a short time to live, so she can inherit his money.
