Abel Gance

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Abel Gance

Abel Gance (born October 25, 1889 in Paris , † November 10, 1981 there ) was a French film pioneer.

Life

Abel Gance was born the illegitimate son of wealthy doctor Abel Flamant . He grew up with his working-class mother Francoise Perethon , who later married her boyfriend Adolphe Gance . At the instigation of his parents, Gance first began an apprenticeship with a lawyer, but at the age of 19 he was drawn to the theater in Brussels . Back in Paris, he joined in 1909 already the first time as an actor in the film Molière by Léonce Perret on. After further short film roles, Gance also learned how to write screenplays . However, acting did not bring him sufficient income and Gance was living in very poor circumstances at the time. Due to inadequate nutrition, he contracted tuberculosis , but was gradually able to overcome the disease.

In 1911 Gance founded a production company and directed his own film for the first time, La Digue , which, like many of his early films, was unsuccessful. Out of frustration, Gance first returned to the stage and wanted to star in the five-hour, self-written piece Victoire de Samothrace together with Sarah Bernhardt . The play would probably have been a success if the outbreak of the First World War had not prevented the premiere. Because of his still poor health, Gance did not have to take part in combat operations and he managed to find a profitable job as a director with the Film d'Art Society. The films Mater Dolorosa (1917) and La Dixieme Symphonie ( The Tenth Symphony , 1918) were successful and Gance built a reputation for himself as a “wild experimenter” with creative means that were unusual for the time, such as close-ups and tracking shots. He therefore had a number of disputes with the management of his film company.

Now Gance had to take part in the last acts of war of the First World War, but was discharged from the army a short time later because of poisoning by mustard gas . However, he applied to be reinstated in order to be able to shoot realistic war scenes for his latest idea, a film called J'accuse ( I accuse , 1919, which he filmed again in 1938 with Jean-Louis Barrault, among others ). The triangular melodrama was unexpectedly a success across Europe and was the first European film to incorporate real scenes of acts of war in a fictional film story. The film was shown on November 11, 2014 on the Franco-German TV channel arte . The accompanying film music was written by Philippe Schoeller and conducted by Frank Strobel . Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudowkin are said to have influenced his experimental, fast film cuts in their works.

During the next film, La Roue (1923), Gance and his second wife Ida Danis contracted a flu virus from which Gance recovered but his wife did not. She died shortly before the film was released. From Gram, Gance left Europe and traveled to the United States . The trip became a nationwide campaign for his film J'Accuse! and Gance received extremely profitable offers from Hollywood , which he declined with thanks. He couldn't get used to the Hollywood production system. One of the happiest moments for Gance was the praise of Hollywood director David Wark Griffith during the screening of the American shortened film J'Accuse! in New York City . When asked what the film is actually accusing, Gance replied: “ The war and its stupidity! “Back in France, Gance received great approval for his new film La Roue , especially for the assembly technology.

In 1927, Gance created his most famous film: Napoléon , which was referred to as the “Lexicon of Film Technology”, as he combined all of the previously known film techniques of the expiring silent film era in one film. Among other things, color photos , 3D recordings and the first wide-screen scenes were shown, shot with three cameras. These were projected onto a huge curved screen with three projectors and thus anticipated film formats such as Cinerama , Cinemiracle and Cinemascope . For the final rental version, Gance took all color and 3D scenes out of the film, with the exception of the 3 projector scenes, because he was afraid that he would confuse the audience too much. Nevertheless, the film received standing ovations when it premiered in Paris. Subsequently, however, the film was only shown in eight European cities, as the requirements for the projection technology could only be met by a few film theaters. For the United States, MGM acquired the distribution rights, but decided not to show the film with three projectors in widescreen, with the incomprehensible claim that this would interfere with the introduction of talkies . The result was a box office failure in the United States.

The film Napoléon was the last in which Gance could use his own creativity. His subsequent sound films were produced for studios that refrained from experimentation. Nonetheless, Gance turned to his masterpiece from time to time in the years that followed. In 1934 the film received stereo sound effects with a so-called pictograph .

During the rest of his life, Gance criticized film historians who , in his opinion, did not give film Napoléon the status it deserved. After all, British director Kevin Brownlow spent two decades restoring and piecing together all of the scenes in the masterpiece.

The new performance with the soundtrack by Sir Carl Davis took place in 1979 in London . It became an overwhelming success. In 1981 the film with the music of Carmine Coppola was shown in a production by his son Francis Ford Coppola at Radio City Hall and thus achieved the success in the United States that he and his director deserved in film history.

Fortunately, Gance lived long enough to see the success of his film. He was planning one last film about Christopher Columbus when he died at the age of 92.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Abel Gance: La Roue . In: Prof. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Kindlers Literature Lexicon In 18 volumes (volumes 1–17 and a register volume.) No. 6. JB Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart, 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , Pp. 270-274

Web links

Commons : Abel Gance  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The dead soldiers return in FAZ from November 11, 2014, page 15.
personal data
SURNAME Gance, Abel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1981
Place of death Paris , France