Das Rad

Gance seems overwhelmed by the theme of humanity crushed by incredible suffering, and some of the symbolism may seem heavy-handed, but this film deserves to be listed among the greats for its wonderful cinematography, the strong contrasts between the first parts portrayal of trains and the second parts moving to the beautiful, impassive scenery of the high Alps.

I have always been an admirer of Gance's Napoleon, but his J'accuse turned me off. La Roue has restored my desire to see the others: La fin de monde, Beethoven, and Austerlitz.

As for the suffering, this was made in 1921 in the aftermath of WW I, which is sufficient to account for Gance's obsession with the theme.

Roue, La (1923)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

French master Abel Gance's 260-minute epic tells the story of Sisif (Severin-Mars), a railroad worker who discovers a young girl named Norma after a horrible train wreck. Sisif takes the girl home to his young son Elie where he plans on raising them as brother and sister. Flash forward several years and Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) has started to fall in love with Norma (Ivy Close) even though he thinks she is his sister. At the same time Sisif has also fallen in love with her, which leads the two men down a road of tragedy. A lot of the epic films released after The Birth of a Nation dealt with epic themes, usually something to do with war, but that's not the case here as you would call this a film that deals in melodrama and character study. It's rather amazing that Gance would try to take this material and push it to over eight hours, which was the original running time. I was a little worried going into this version, running 260-minutes but it turned out to be a great beauty of a film. I really don't think the film ran too long and in fact, the running time goes by quite fast but the only thing I'd question is some of the stuff that we go through two or three times. This includes one character attempting suicide numerous times and I think this could have been handled in a different way. The legendary editing is the main highlight of this film as it goes in a maniac style way. There are numerous edits each second during certain scenes and I'm really not sure if it could be done better even with today's standards. Even though the editing is quite sharp and fast, it never gets in the way of the story trying to be told. Another fascinating aspect is when the main character starts to go blind. The director then turns the visuals on screen to an all white setting to where we're seeing things just like the character who is going blind. the final sequences of the film are quite beautiful and haunting and really puts everything we've seen before it into justice. I think for the most part that the performances are good but I think at times the director would have been wise to bring them down a little bit. Severin-Mars really steals the film as the love struck father who is slowly losing his mind, life and eyes due to the love his has for the girl he raised as his daughter. Close gives the weakest performance of the three but she still handles the screen quite well. La Roue is certainly a demanding film to sit through but at the end of the film I was quite happy to take the ride and this is certainly a film that every film buff should see at least once in their life.

Director Jean Cocteau said: "There is cinema before and after 'La Roue' ("The Wheel") as there is painting before and after Picasso." So influential was French director Abel Gance's February 1923's "The Wheel," that it has been carefully studied frame by frame ever since its release. Famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa claimed the movie made a huge impression on him before he became interested in working in the film business. Today its importance towards cinema's impact merits an inclusion into the "1001 Movies To See Before You Die" reference book.

What makes "The Wheel" so interesting is Gance's use of lighting and unconventional editing to unveil the emotions and tensions of the movie's characters. Right from the start he purposely designed his film to undergo a series of quick cuts, beginning with a two-train crash. The multi-casualty accident heightens the tragedy where our protagonist, Sisif, a train engineer, ends up with Norma, a little girl whose mother died. "The Wheel" also contains an inordinate amount of multiple exposures, thrusting the narrative forward through a dizzingly series of events within several decades. Even its title symbolizes that every life in the movie is a dramatic example of a cycle of lives who are part of a rotation of a wheel that constantly repeats itself every generation.

"The Wheel" is a story revolving around the widower Severin-Mars, as the engineer, who raises the little girl, acted as a grown-up by Ivy Close, along with his son, Elie. The aging engineer becomes attracted to Norma, as well as Elie. Conflicts abound. The film's second half abruptly shifts to the Alps, where the three, as well as Norma's husband, end up in a topsy-turvy meshing of dramatics. The decision to film in the Alps, not in Gance's original script, was made because the director's wife, Marguerite, came down with tuberculosis and the doctor recommended the mountains to help alleviate her symptoms.

Gance's use of several innovative cinematic features also are presented in "The Wheel." Included is one of the first examples of a swish (or whip) pan where the camera quickly pans and transitions to a new scene at a point where Sisif is relating about Elie's death. Gance also introduces to French cinema a precursor to Sergei Eisenstein's more definitive examples of 'intellectual montage.' In "The Wheel," Gance shows a train laboriously climbing up the Mont-Blanc mountain side, then he cuts to a snail, showing how slow the train in moving.

Gance always saw himself as "the Victor Hugo of the screen," and as with the famous French writer, the director loved long, long productions. "The Wheel" at first was 32-reels, clocking in at over eight hours. The most common length of the movie on today's DVD's is four and a half hours long. The production was so long that actor Severin-Mars died of a heart attack soon after his parts were filmed. Despite looking old for his age, he was only 48 when stricken. His leads in "The Wheel" as well as Gance's earlier 1918 "The Tenth Symphony" was a powerful presence on the screen.

This was also Ivy Close's last movie in a major role. Voted by the Daily Mirror as the World's Beautiful Woman in 1908, the English actress beat out 1,500 contestants. She married filmmaker Elwin Neame and was one of the first film stars to begin a movie production company, in 1914. She left cinema after "The Wheel" when her husband wanted her to stay home to raise their kids, only to see him die shortly after in a motorcycle crash. She appeared in secondary parts in two movies in the late 1920's before talkies ended her 44-film career. Her son Ronald Neame, a producer, worked alongside director David Lean to create his classic 1945 'Brief Encounter' and 1946 'Great Expectations,' while her great grandson, Gareth Neame, was responsible in bringing the worldwide phenomenon television series, 'Downton Abbey,' to the airwaves in 2010.

La Roue / The Wheel (1923) : Brief Review -

Abel Gance's visionary and mind-shattering take on disturbed relationships. La Roue is not a film for everyone so be careful before watching it and make sure whether you can handle it or not. I will give you 2 big reasons for it. One is, it's a long film about 7 hours and second, it shows relationships in disturbing ways which might just shatter your mind. A railway engineer adopts a young girl orphaned by a train crash. Years later when she starts getting suitors, he feels like falling in Love with her. The same happens with her brother too which is actually a very terrible and mind shaking idea at first place. Later the father recovers from the delusions but then grapples with whether or not to tell her the truth about her parentage. Firstly, i wanna salute the writer and the director for taking this concept to make a movie on it because however wrong it seems, it still has reasonable causes to believe it. Just imagine loving your beautiful sister or your daughter and the same when you realise she is not in with your blood relations and suddenly the meaning of that Love changes. Such an Astounding Idea it was. I was sold here only, i just had to see it getting through with it till the end formally. Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close and G. Gravone gives super performances and Magnier in supporting role also gets it right. Abel Gance (assisted by Cendrars) uses then-revolutionary lighting techniques, and rapid scene changes and cuts in this grand scale presentation. I must admit that Gance was truly a visionary director and La Roue is his third film after J'Accuse (1919) and Napoleon (1927) which has left me stunned. Overall, a Grand Classic which uses the philosophy of Wheel to show the different meanings of Relationship and Love.

RATING - 8/10*

By - #samthebestest

This stunning 1923 silent film was restored by David Shepard and others in a print that runs nearly 4 hours and 30 minutes. The original film, directed by Abel Gance, was about twice that length, never released in the US except in a severely cut down print of about 2 hours.

The story, a "tragedy of modern times," is seemingly a simple one. Aman named Sisif (Séverin-Mars) rescues a baby girl in a train wreck and raises her as his own along with his son. She's known as a "rose of the rails" since the family lives in a squalid house by the railroad where Sisif is an engineer. As the years pass the girl, named Norma, grows to adulthood. Things get uneasy when Sisif realizes that he is in love with Norma (Ivy Close), and things turn to tragedy when his son Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) also loves her ... but believes she is his sister. Sisif plots to marry her off to a wealthy man to escape the impending disaster.

After Norma is unhappily married off, Sisif is injured in an accident and banished to a small mountain railway near Mont Blanc. He lives there with his son on the edge of a glacier but even in their isolation they cannot escape tragedy ... of their love of Norma.

The film is high art, operatic, Greek tragedy, and must be approached as such. The visuals are stunning. The composition and sets includes the smallest of details, and Gance uses close-ups, iris shots, fades, and rapid editing (borrowed from D.W. Griffith's masterpieces) to make this one of the most beautiful films ever made. The current version also includes tinting to enhance the emotional pitch of the film.

The performance of Séverin-Mars won't be to every taste, but his old-school acting style is similar to that of Emil Jannings. Without dialog, all he has are his body language and face. Shots are held to emphasize the emotional plight of the aging man. And you can see every thought he has in his face.

The other great performance is by Ivy Close, a British actress who also worked in European silent films. She resembles Norma Shearer and as with Séverin-Mars, her face shows every moment of joy and sadness. There's a stunning scene toward the end when she's asked to go to a village dance. She runs to powder her face and sees a gray hair, a line on her forehead. She's growing old. La Roue, the wheel of life, is turning, and Norma is growing old.

This superb restoration is accompanied by a beautiful and haunting score by Robert Israel, itself a symphonic work of great power. Séverin-Mars died soon after filming was completed in 1921. Gance did not complete and release the film until 1923. Ivy Close made a few more silent films in the late 1920s and retired from the screen.

This may be a film you only watch once in your lifetime, but you will never forget it.