La rosa sulle rotaie

An intimate, sprawling epicn, nearly unreviewable, it veers wildly from brilliance to hypnotic ennui, dulling the senses.

Impressive train wreck opens this five hour (originally nine hours) meditation on a small family living and working in train yards, beginning in 1923 France, and the next several decades.

Experimental in the extreme: narrative structure (and largely, coherence) is dismissed from minute one. Many scenes appear as though the cinematographer was hypnotically drawn to something, and just filmed it endlessly. An editor should have cut this footage down tremendously, but the editor appears to be suffering the same malady.

Surreal set designs and lighting, backlighting to produce silhouettes, actors walking in and out of focus as they walk in the frame, and quick-cut editing give this an impressive, hallucinatory feeling, like a very long, meandering hallucination, with circular lenses and shapes to impart on the audience the father's failing eyesight.

Entire reels of film roll through, where I am left with a sense of "What am I watching, and why is it taking so long for something to happen?" Free form filmmaking, partially engrossing, but one can't help but wonder if a LOT of editing would have improved this by adding a bit of coherency? Yet would that have cost the film its hypnotic, hallucinatory feel?

Abel Gance in my mind was a pioneer of not just French cinema but cinema in general. All of his work is well worth the look and are visual and technical marvels, some of the techniques being one he pioneered. Some of his best works, 'Napoleon' being one of them, are revolutionary in not just silent film but also film of all kinds and are towering achievements. Is his work for all tastes? Not all, tending to be very long and sprawling with a lot of patience required.

Had heard so many great things about 'La Roue' (English translation being 'The Wheel') and being somebody that loved especially 'Napoleon' so much, there was no doubt in my mind about wanting to see it. Saw it during one of my film reviewing breaks from here on a lazy afternoon alone and was very impressed indeed. 'La Roue' won't be one of my favourite films any time soon and to me it is not quite one of Gance's best, with it for example not having the special factor that 'Napoleon'. It is an extremely good film though with many outstanding elements.

Can understand why 'La Roue' won't be to everybody's taste as it is slightly divisive here. Most of the time the pace to me was fine, but there were times in the slighter moments where the film dragged with some scenes going on a little longer than necessary.

Likewise with anybody feeling that there is some unnecessary repetition, with a couple of actions happening more than once and one questions why.

On the other hand, 'La Roue' looks amazing visually and technically, an achievement even. Not just for back then, but also then. The editing is not as "unlike anything seen before" quality like the innovative editing in 'Napoleon' was, but it is still very fluid and the transitioning is practically seamless throughout. The sets are also beautiful to look at. The standout visually and technically though is the magnificent cinematography, very audacious with some very interesting and beautifully composed techniques. Also with some beautifully poetic shots in the more emotional moments. The music is haunting and fits well, not over-bearing or over-dramatic or sentimentalised.

Gance's direction is near-triumphant and superbly controlled. The story is not always perfect pace-wise, but has a huge amount of poignant heart. Especially in the denouement, my heart broke into two here. Although 'La Roue' is a very long film, the longest seen since March and one of the longest ever, much of the time it doesn't feel long. The pace is controlled and deliberate but mostly is not dull, was too transfixed by the visuals and the emotion. The characters are worth caring for, especially Norma, and Severin-Mars is a revelation (searingly intense but also heartfelt) out of a cast that all play their parts beautifully. Ivy Close is touching too.

Summing up, very good and nearly great. 8/10

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.

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

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.