La fin du monde

It was the beginning of the talkies.Whereas lots of his colleagues were heading for the stage production style,Abel Gance tried his hand at the disaster movie."End of the world" no less.The screenplay was co-written with astronomer Camille Flammarion,author of an "Astronomie Populaire" which I own in my library.

A giant comet is to collide with our good old Earth,our days are numbered.Two brothers ,a poet (Gance himself) and his brother (Victor Francen) think that this catastrophe could help men to become brothers and put an end to war.

Alas!Gance was not really up to it.The playing is histrionic ,and Gance's ,Francen's and Colette Darfeuil's performances are so dismal it's impossible to take the story seriously.Besides,the special effects -of course ,it was 1930,and Gance had not Lang's budget for "Metropolis" - make the film sometimes look like "Plan nine outer space" Ed Wood's immortal work.The story is patchy ,inconsistent and difficult to catch up with .

But, like in every Gance movie,there are good things and it is to these that any review of the movie must address itself.The first sequence is mind-boggling,so stunning we know it will be hard to continue in that vein: it depicts the crucifixion and we really think we're in Jesus's time .Then a tracking out reveals us it's only a stage performance.The connection with the movie escapes me a bit -unless it represents the eternal evil of man- but it's so unexpected all we have to do is admire.The final scenes are relatively impressive:some of them were used again in the highly superior "J'accuse" (1938)cause Gance as it was often the case in his long career ,was running out of money.While the disaster is impending,some take refuge in prayers whereas the others give them over to huge orgies,which Gance depicts in lavish detail.

Both "La Fin Du Monde" and "J'accuse" feature similar ending .Victor Francen declares the war over and announces the "Universal Republic" for the survivors in the former,and the Universal States General are summoned in the latter.

Many Gance works were despised by critics bUT I must say that he took more chances than Godard and co in his life time,and even if his first and his last talkies ("Cyrano et D'Artagnan,1963) are looked upon by pretty much as failures,they were glorious failed attempts.I wish we had an Abel Gance in 2006!

The version watched was the U.S. abortion which ran 54" out of the originals release of 105". Which was truncated down from 180"+ so a-lot of the film has gone missing. What is left is barely comprehensible since almost all of the original dialog is gone as well as any character development and sub-plots.

LA FIN Du MONDE (1931) THE END OF THE WORLD was Abel Gance's first sound feature. It is based on the 1894 Novel 'OMEGA: The Last Days of the World' by Camille Flammarion. The plot is how will Humanity react when informed that the Planet is going to be hit by a Comet in 114 Days. What follows is first disbelief, acceptance of the inevitable and how different facets of society react to the coming DOOM!

The Scientists led by Martial Novalic (Victor Francen) plan a rebirth of the World (if anybody survives) in their idealized vision of the UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. Which appears to be a sort of Neo-Fascist governing body like 'Wings Over The World' in THINGS TO COME (1936). Most people run around in a montage of scenes like their heads were about to be chopped off. Some continue business as usual, literally, others decide the best way to check out is in a orgy of 'Booze & Sex' or religious resignation. The merits of each choice are left up to the viewer to decide. Somewhere in this mess is Jean Novalic (Abel Gance) Martial's Brother, for the most part he appears to have ended up on the cutting room floor.

It is a close run thing and the Comet passes through the Earths atmosphere missing the Planet but causing great damage in it's wake. The SFX scenes are poorly done even by early 1930's standards. What happens next is up to the viewers imagination for the film abruptly ends there. Gance's backers had run out of both faith and money, seized the film, trimming it with a meat Axe, which U.S. distributor Harold Auten (1934) added his incompetence.

The concept of the film was bold and very original for it's time though it is hard to tell how well it was executed from this version. Their knowledge of Comets was lacking compared to 21st Century sensibilities. There is certainly a political message here, though any time I hear/see the words UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC, I get nervous. Gance's version being a combination of the less savory aspects of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Republic(s). Another Director/Producer saw some merits in this film, Cecil B. DeMille (C.B.) who was also considering WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1933) by Balmer & Wylie for filming. That may have been a not a bad idea. C.B. would have jettisoned the political baggage concentrated on the human story and the SFX scenes and made another commercial success.

A comet soon strikes our Earth. How do people react? Some prey, some panic, some wildly booze and have sex in orgies, some continue to search money with fever. Will they find peace? If only we could have seen one day the real integral version of this French science fiction, maybe we could be more satisfied, but the melodramatic interprations doesn't help, nor the poor special effects lacking high budget. A few scenes can be saved, the introduction, the Eiffel tower, the orgy interrupted by religious,... Eternal regrets.

Billed onscreen as "the first major spectacle of French speaking cinema", "La Fin Du Monde" is hard to judge in its present form (I saw the 90-minute version); edited down by the producers (with a hatchet, it seems like sometimes) from its original 3-hours-plus length, it is often incoherent. For much of its (new) running length, it is also static, talky and melodramatic. But after the comet is finally seen, in the last 20 minutes or so, there are some spectacular sequences and effects, the orgiastic celebrations of life are strangely moving, and Abel Gance's pacifist and humanist message comes across; while his prophecy of a "Universal Republic" seems more utopic now than ever, the one about the "Federal States of Europe" is not far removed from the initial ideals behind the formation of the European Union, a process that didn't begin until two decades (and one more World War) after this film was made. *** out of 4.