ABEL GANCE
[Film Technology]
Although Abel Gance, as early as 1927, used the
Polyvision process to expand, by triptych, the screen image to three times
its normal size, and American companies experimented with wider film gauges in the late 1920s, it was not
until 1952, with This is Cinerama, that wide-screen again attracted the film
industry’s attention. Gance, Abel (1889-1981), French film director, who
was profoundly influential, both as an innovator and as a technician, in the
field of film-making. Born in Paris, Gance was attracted initially to the
theatre (he was an admirer of Sarah Bernhardt). A self-taught man of genius, he quickly took to
writing scenarios and making films, and his early creations, such as Mater
Dolorosa (Sorrowful Mother, 1917; remade in 1932) and La Dixième
Symphonie (Tenth Symphony, 1918), are characterized by a delirious
imagination and exceptional visual perception. He took the revolutionary use of
montage introduced by D. W. Griffith and pushed it to extreme limits
in J'Accuse (1918; I Accuse), which was remade in 1937, and in
the powerful and melodramatic La Roue (The Wheel, 1922). On the latter,
he was credited with raising cinema to the status of an art form. Gance was a far-reaching pioneer:
he invented new filmic techniques, such as mounting the camera on a sledge or a
horse, [sledge camera mounting, horse camera mounting]the use of multiple superimpositions, rapid cutting, and the triple screen (a forerunner of the wide-screen format). He also predicted the
introduction of sound. His most celebrated film is the full-length lyrical
silent epic, Napoléon Vu par Abel Gance (Napoleon as Seen by Abel Gance,
1927). In 1980 Francis Ford Coppola presented the newly rediscovered film with
accompaniment by a 60-piece orchestra, and it is now regularly screened to
capacity audiences. Gance's later films included La Tour de Nesle (The
Tower of Nesle, 1954), and Austerlitz (1960; The Battle of Austerlitz),
but they met with little success. His last years were marred by
disillusionment, and he died almost forgotten by the French cinema industry to
which he had contributed so much. Gance was, however, made an Officier of the
Légion d'Honneur, a Commandeur of the Ordre National du Mérite, and an Officier
des Arts et des Lettres. He took the revolutionary use of montage introduced by
D. W. Griffith and pushed it to extreme limits
in J'Accuse (1918; I Accuse), which was remade in 1937, and in
the powerful and melodramatic La Roue (The Wheel, 1922). On the latter,
he was credited with raising cinema to the status of an art form. Gance was a
far-reaching pioneer: he invented new filmic techniques, such as mounting the
camera on a sledge or a horse, the use of multiple
superimpositions, rapid
cutting, and the triple screen (a forerunner of the wide-screen format). He also predicted the introduction of sound. His most
celebrated film is the full-length lyrical silent epic, Napoléon Vu par Abel
Gance (Napoleon as Seen by Abel Gance, 1927). In 1980 Francis Ford Coppola
presented the newly rediscovered film with accompaniment by a 60-piece
orchestra, and it is now regularly screened to capacity audiences.
