A Roda

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.

Abel Gance is not a filmmaker who thinks small. There is something to be said for a master filmmaker (for Gance clearly is a master) pursuing his vision at all cost. In subject matter, La Roue possess similar qualities to early 20th Century realist novels. Frank Norris comes to mind. Of course Norris's novel McTeague was the subject of another grand visionary director, Erich Von Stroheim.

Sisif, an engineer, a "man of the rails," finds an orphaned child after a railroad crash. He takes this child, Norma, home to raise as his own, alongside his son Elie. Fifteen years pass, Norma grows into a beautiful, free-spirited woman. Sisif begins to look at his adopted daughter in a way that is very unfatherly, nor is he alone in his desire. Elie, Sisif's son, seems to have feelings for his "sister," feelings Norma shares. Uncontrolled passions lead to tragedy until the (somewhat) optimistic ending. The film's first half takes place either in the family home surrounded by rails or around the railyards. The background of the railroad, with its grime and smoke, does add to the ambiance of the film. The second half is largely set in the snow covered alps. Both halves possess a realism due to the locations.

There are sections in La Roue that rank among the best in silent cinema. My favorite is the sequence where Norma leaves for Paris, a sequence about halfway through the film. She says goodbye to her home in a series of beautifully poetic shots. Then, she boards a train driven by her "father." En route, a fit of jealousy consumes Sisif. He plans to crash the train. What follows is a series of fast edits that are as advanced as anything used by the Russians from this time period. It is hard not to be awed by the sequence. Nor, is this the only one. La Roue has about half a dozen such eye-popping moments. It also features a moving finale that seems earned.

It should also be noted that La Roue, even in the shortened cut that remains, runs four hours and twenty minutes. It cannot be watched casually! I spent one whole day with Flicker Alley's DVD, homebound due to an aching leg and a reeling stomach. Others may not have the infirmity (and the patience) for that type of commitment. I can understand. The running time, even shortened, is overly generous for the story told. There are sections that drag. A certain repetitious quality hurts the film (one character tries three separate times to kill himself with a train). La Roue is not an epic like Lawrence of Arabia, or, rather, La Roue is an intimate epic, about people, about desire, and about despair. Most certainly the story did not need the indulgent running time, but I'm glad the film exists just as an example of a filmmaker going for broke. I even felt my day was well spent, even if the idea of watching La Roue in its entirety a second time seems more like combat than entertainment.

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

Okay, as I am discovering, the name of Abel Gance as has reached us through a long and troubled historiography is mostly in the contours of a European DW Griffith; the broad historic scopes, the elaborate film language. But whereas Griffith's pioneering efforts were narrowed by a set of Victorian ideals about a world where good and evil are clearly defined and the prevalent Western thinking that has traditionally regarded the struggle between these two fractions in rational, linear terms as the forward struggle of human thought to achieve enlightenment from the forces of darkness - the forces of production or state morals for Griffith - Gance foresaw deeper: objects cast their shadow here, human beings have interior dimensions, and the darkness no longer threatens from outside but is recast inside the human character.

This is the film that Kurosawa fondly remembered as one of the first to impress him. So, a film that resonated within Japanese culture of the time, a culture that has increasingly sought out and adopted - long before the westerns of John Ford - Western perspectives in their traditionally abstract eye.

But the more obvious stuff before we get there, how the film must have equally well impressed the early Soviet filmmakers. There may not be crowds animating, acting out rigorous ideals - not history as in Griffith, but present action, history in the making - but there is a shift; the Shakespearian tragedy, and thus the cleansing, high-minded catharsis, now transferred to the working class, so that the new Oedipus, the new Lear or Sissyphus, the new king punished with divine madness becomes the insignificant railroad engineer - named Sisif no less - with the perennially greasy, coalblack face. It is now the lowly and disenchanted whose life agonies can be imbued, and given voice to, with the majesty of a world ruler; hence the ruled world, the kingly dominion, is reordered as the private life of organized anxieties.

So, this part of the film should bode well with a contemporary audience, who can also better acquiesce to the idea of a film that runs for 4 1/2 hours. But there is stuff that matters more, I believe.

See here. Sisif's house is situated where the tracks converge and disperse from again, so at the navel of the soul. At regular intervals fates depart from there - some of them the desperate attempts to destroy the self, others harboring omens or disaster.

But once up in the exile of the mountains, the house - now the hermitage, the temple of atonement - is where the tracks lead and stop. There is no going further, and there are some amazing shots of snowed mountain peaks captured from a moving train that you will want to see. Here, the protagonists must struggle with a karma that is not possible to extricate without the dissolution of the self that is the essence of spiritual transformation.

The poignant image that unifies vision; wheels, wheels turning fates in the incessant cycle of life-renewing destruction. The Soviets appropriated this image - as well as the rapid-fire montage pioneered here by Gance - as a representation of social mechanisms at work; but here the image is properly internal, in-sight into abstract soul.

The heartfelt denouement is about the last - and hence, first - turn of the wheel, the cosmic round of succession of an impermanent, transient universe. It's all pretty obvious at this point, which maybe derails the more powerful metaphors into a typically classical story end.

So this is probably why the film spoke with clarity to the Japanese, whose world is not linear but vivid impressions from a bird's eye. At the end, a circle of young girls and boys dance away in the shadow of the mountain; like in so many Japanese landscape paintings where idyllic everyday pleasures among the cherry-blossomed trees unfold beneath the distant horizon of Mt. Fuji.

Gance shows how the final release from the round can only begin with the acceptance of suffering. It is a Buddhist image, whereby this darkness recast inside the human character is finally understood to be no different from light.

We may encounter it in a jodo temple as the bodhisattva Kannon-Avalokitesvara, who reconciles both male and female form - and so all human disparity - in singular, unbound mercy; the name in her female form, poignantly as ever with the Japanese rendered into picture language, means 'Observing the Sounds (or Cries) of the World'. So, not the person who observes, but the act, the living process of the round - filled with the cries of suffering - as it comes into being and goes again.

Asides into meditation. But the film is boss as is.

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