La Roue (1923)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Roue |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 418 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Abel Gance |
| script | Abel Gance |
| production | Abel Gance Charles Pathé |
| music |
Arthur Honegger Paul Fosse |
| camera |
Gaston Brun Marc Bujard Léonce-Henri Burel Maurice Duverger |
| cut |
Marguerite Beaugé Abel Gance |
| occupation | |
| |
La Roue is a silent film released in 1923 by the French director Abel Gance . German reference titles are Das Rad and Rollenderäder - Rasendes Blut .
action
The engine driver Sisif saves a little girl in a train accident and decides to take the child in and raise it. As she gets older, Sisif falls in love with his foundling, but tries to hide his affection for her. When he saw her swinging in the front yard, he found no other way out of his rising delight than to draw the curtains. Later he becomes blind, so that he can hardly work on the mountain railway and twice, out of desperation, threatens to derail a train. A long time later, shortly before Sisif's death, the two get together again and Sisif has the opportunity to enjoy being around his foundling in his last days.
particularities
As in many other Gances films, this one is also largely for experimental purposes, especially in the way of filming. Camera changes with ever faster frequency and close-ups of Sisif's face are part of it and represented completely new material in the film world of that time. The extreme dynamization of the various recordings are in many aspects a kind of forerunner of Eisenstein's “Russian montage” .
Versions
The film initially appeared on 32 film rolls (length almost 7 hours) and was premiered in December 1922 in the Gaumont Palace in Paris in four parts. The parts were titled “Le rose du rail”, “La tragédie de Sisif”, “La course à l'abime” and “Symphonie blanche”. For international marketing, Gance cut the film into 12 roles in 1924. In 1928 a version of the film was made with a length of only 8 roles. In 2008 a restored version of the work with a length of 274 minutes was presented.
A German-French cooperation project of the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation, ZDF / ARTE, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin worked on an extended reconstruction and restoration of the film from 2017 under the editorship of Nina Goslar and Stefan Lang . Film material believed to be lost was tracked down, reconstructed and restored in various archives.
music
The original film music , which has not been performed since the premiere, served as the leitmotif for the compilation during the restoration, because its directory has been preserved as the only authentic document of the premiere version of the film. This music was compiled by Arthur Honegger and his collaborator for this project, Paul Fosse . Fosse, at the time the Gaumont-Palace cinema bandmaster and an important film music player, composed and compiled the music for every silent film.
Paul Fosse and Arthur Honegger did not create their own film music for the premiere of the film, but arranged works by well-known French composers.
Paul Fosse noted and archived all of his compiled works. These documents are probably the most comprehensive source of silent film music , today owned by the Bibliothèque nationale de France , and made it possible to reconstruct the film music and thus the film. The musicologist Jürg Stenzl had already dealt with the film music before this project, and as part of the project, his French colleague Max James supported the search for sources and original sheet music. The Mainz composer Bernd Thewes was then responsible for the overall composition of the premiere music as part of this film project. In a process lasting several years, the film La Roue was reconstructed as a complete work. The music consists of 117 music numbers by 56 composers. Arthur Honegger himself composed the overture and five further sequences, three of which, however, have been lost. A total of five pieces are missing and had to be replaced appropriately. The entire work was recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra . The world premiere of this reconstructed and restored version took place on September 14, 2019 as part of the Berlin Music Festival in the Konzerthaus Berlin . The premiere in France took place at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon on October 19 and 20, 2019. The film was then broadcast on TV on Arte on October 29 and November 5, 2019.
literature
- Abel Gance: La Roue. In: Prof. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): 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
- The History of Motion Pictures , Maurice Bardèche and Robert Brasillach (translated by Iris Barry), New York, New York, WW Norton & Company / The Museum of Modern Art, 1938
Web links
- La Roue in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- La Roue at silentera.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/R/Roue1922.html
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014417/technical?ref_=tt_dt_spec
- ↑ La Roue - the buried masterpiece by Abel Gance (3SAT cultural time from September 16, 2019, to the music from approx. 3:05 minutes)
- ^ Film concert “La Roue” as part of the Musikfest Berlin Online presence of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Accessed January 2, 2020.
- ↑ World premiere - Abel Gance: La Roue, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Frank Strobel, September 14, 2019 Online presence of the Berliner Festspiele (PDF file, 3.5 MB). Accessed January 2, 2020.
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014417/alternateversions?tab=cz&ref_=tt_trv_alt