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Movies Forum Index » Silent Movies Forum » Madison Isthmus: LA ROUE DVD review...
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| Bruce Calvert... |
 Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 8:47 am |
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http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=22610
Wilmington on DVD: One of the greatest silent symphonies
La Roue, I'm Not There, and the films of Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin
Mike Wilmington on Friday 05/09/2008 11:12 am , (2) Recommendations
La Roue (A)
France; Abel Gance, 1922, Flicker Alley
Abel Gance, maker of the spectacular 1927 French epic Napoleon, was one of
the great symphonic masters of the silent movie, and La Roue is one of his
greatest symphonies.
It's also a real cinematic event: the restoration of a legendary and once
vastly influential film epic, released in France in 1922 at 7½ hours,
ruinously cut to 2 hours or so for American audiences, and now restored to
4½ hours and much of its previous grandeur by Paris' Lobster Film Studios,
Eric Lange and David Shepard. It's another beautiful job by Flicker Alley,
and no true cinephile should miss it.
The story of La Roue (The Wheel) is, in many ways, pure silent-movie
melodama, but done with such grace, style and deep feeling that it sweeps
you up and thrills you, just as the silent melodramas of Gance's friend and
admirer D.W. Griffith still do. Shot on location at the St. Roch railroad
yards near Nice, conceived and written by Gance himself, it's the Zola-esque
story of a moody crack engineer (played by Gance's favorite actor of the
period, Severin-Mars) rescues a little girl from a devastating train wreck
and secretly adopts her; she grows into a beauty (played by American actress
Ivy Close) who wins both Sisif's heart and desire and also that of his
sensitive violin-maker son Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) and the unscrupulous
wealthy railroad man de Hershan (Pierre Mangier).
More train wreck and tragedy envelops them all, and the second half of the
tale unfolds on the snow-capped peaks of Mount Blanc, where Sisif (whose
name derives from the Sysiphus of Albert Camus' favorite classic myth) is
finally exiled.
Gance was both a classicist and a great film innovator, and La Roue is told
in a blazingly brilliant style that blends stunning compositions and
passionate acting with brilliantly accelerated editing techniques (in the
action scenes), pounding volcanic cutting rhythms that went even further
than Griffith's and obviously were another major inspiration on Eisenstein
and the Russians. La Roue, whose main admirers included the young Akira
Kurosawa, is a cinematic masterpiece that we have never before seen with
such power and complexity. It rends the emotions, drenches the eyes and
quickens the heart. Among this release's major assets: a contemporary
documentary by famed novelist Blaise Cendrars, who was present for some of
the filming, and a new orchestral score by Robert Israel, to replace the
long missing original score by Artur Honegger.
Bravo, Abel Gance! And bravo, Lobster Studio and Flicker Alley, for bringing
most of this marvelous La Roue back from the dead. (Silent, with intertitles
and new orchestral score. Extras: Blaise Cendrars documentary and booklet
with William M. Drew and Robert Israel essays.)
--
Bruce Calvert
--
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