Rare vidéo d'enfants qui s'amusent

New York Film Festival 2023:

La Roue (Abel Gance), 1923

La roue (Abel Gance, 1923)

My Movie Reviews of the Day:

• Our Hospitality (1923)

Directed By: John G. Blystone & Buster Keaton

Plot Summary: on a trip back to his childhood home, a man falls in love with a woman he meets on the train. However, that woman comes from a family who has vowed to kill every member of his family.

Where to Watch: YouTube

This film is one of Buster Keaton's best. It is an absolute masterpiece. The way he can command a screen without uttering one single word is completely unmatched. This film absolutely masters being both a comedy and a drama. The central plot is very dramatic, being very reminiscent of 'Romeo & Juliet' (except with a much happier ending); a man and a woman from to feuding families fall in love. They manage to perfectly offset this drama with the use of ironic comedy; Buster Keaton's character becomes a guest in the house of thr family who is trying to kill him. I was laughing my butt off yet still hanging on the edge of my seat during the chase scenes. Everyone should watch this film.

•La roue [translates to 'The Wheel'] (1923)

Directed By: Abel Gance

Plot Summary: a railway engineer adopts a young girl who was orphaned by a train crash. As she gets older, he battles with whether to tell her about her true parentage.

Where to Watch: an app called Kanopy. It is free to use. All you have to do is enter in your library card.

This film is not for the faint of heart, mostly due to the fact that it is sad, on top of sad, on top of even more sad. The movie starts off sad, and ends even more sad. However, this truly is a beautiful film. There are actually a lot of ties to Greek mythology in this film. The main character, Sisif, is derived from Sisyphus, who was punished to endlessly push a rock uphill by the gods. Similarly, Sisif's life seems to be an endless tragedy. There are also ties to Oedipus, as Sisif harbors incestuous desires towards his adoptive daughter. You can't help but admire Sisif's resilience throughout this almost five hour long film. He eventually marries his daughter off to a wealthy businessman, as it is the only way he can keep his desires at bay. While it pains him a great deal to send her away, he finds some form of solace in his work, as he is truly passionate about being a train engineer. Then, ab accident at work blinds him, and while it is completely devastating for him, it leads to his reunion with his daughter. In conclusion, while it may seem like asking someone to dedicate five hours of their life to a French silent film from the 1920s is a lot, I really suggest you give this film a try.

•Der Letzte Mann [translates to 'The Last Laugh'] (1924)

Directed By: F.W. Murnau

Plot Summary: an aging doorman faces the scorn of his neighbors, friends, and society after being fired from his job at a luxurious hotel.

Where to Watch: YouTube

I believe this film is an absolute must-watch because the ideas presented in this film can be easily translated to modern day, those ideas being the self-imposed importance on society and status. This film follows an older man who works as a doorman at a prestigious hotel, a job he is very proud to have. He wears his uniform with pride, that uniform becoming an extension of his own identity. He is not himself without it. However, after his age starts to interfere with his work, he his demoted to a lowly bathroom attendant. This absolutely devastates him. He went from a position where guests and friends looked up to him to being someone who is essentially invisible. No one usually takes a second glance at the man who hands you a hand-towel in the bathroom. The most devastating part of this whole ordeal is his uniform being taken away from him. His boss literally rips the jacket of his uniform off of him, thus also ripping his own sense of identity with it. After all, who is he without that uniform? After he is demoted, he is now at the bottom of the food chain, and everyone around him treats him as such. They laugh at him behind his back and give him no respect. These themes are absolutely still seen today. There are certain professions that are more highly regarded than others. Doctors, lawyers, CEOs, are people who are very often looked up to. They are treated with the utmost respect. People take one look at their uniform and they think, "Wow, they really did something with their life". Then, on the flip side of the coin, there are professions that are looked down upon. Mechanics, cashiers, house cleaners, are often treated with very little respect. People take one look at their uniforms and think, "Wow, they really must have slacked off. They could've been a doctor and yet they settled for being a cashier". In conclusion, watch this film.

Abel Gance's epic 'La Roue' restored on Criterion Channel

For too long, Abel Gance was the forgotten master of silent cinema, a pioneering innovator whose experiments in cinematic storytelling and expressive techniques inspired filmmakers all over the world. Gance was a master conductor of the cinematic form, as influential and consequential as D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein in his impact. After the worldwide success of his anti-war drama…

View On WordPress

Ivy Close and Séverin-Mars in La Roue (Abel Gance, 1923)

Cast: Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close, Gabriel de Gravone, Pierre Magnier, Georges Térof, Gil Clary, Max Maxudian. Screenplay: Abel Gance. Cinematography: Gaston Brun, Mac Bujard, Léonce-Henri Burel, Maurice Duverger. Art direction: Robert Boudrioz. Film editing: Marguerite Beaujé, Abel Gance. Music: Arthur Honegger.

The plot is operatic, the technique is novelistic, and the aim is tragic. Abel Gance's La Roue (aka The Wheel) never satisfies on any of those counts, but it's not without a lot of effort on his part as well as his actors and technicians. At its premiere, it ran for somewhere between seven-and-a-half and nine hours (depending on which source you trust), spread over three days, and was a success, earning praise from Jean Cocteau among others. Gance then produced a cut that ran for two and a half hours, which was the version most people saw for many years until film historians set about to reproduce the original. That restoration is the one I sat through for sevenish hours spread over four nights on the Criterion Channel. I have seen seven-hour movies (and some that seemed like it) before, most notably Bela Tarr's Sátántangó (1994). The urge I usually have afterward is to try to justify the expenditure of time, typically by categorizing it as an "immersive experience." That approach works with films like Tarr's, which has a grounded reality to it that provides a look into a human existence other than my own, which is the aim of all narrative art. It's less easily justified when the film is as preposterous as Gance's is in many ways. I said it was operatic in its plotting, and here it's useful to think of the melodramatic excesses of works like Verdi's Il Trovatore, based on a florid Spanish play that involves foundlings, mistaken identities, and people torn between passion and duty. La Roue has a foundling, survivor of a train wreck, rescued by a railroad engineer who raises her along with his own son, allowing both of them to believe they are siblings, which works until she blossoms into a young woman and first the father and then the son realize they're in love with her. The treatment of this story evokes, as others have noted, the novels of Victor Hugo and Émile Zola, but it also reminds me of Thomas Hardy's works, in which fate (which Hardy calls "hap," or the blind workings of chance) forestalls any efforts by the protagonists to chart their own course. And since the story involves a kind of incestuous passion, the legend of Oedipus comes to mind, and sure enough Gance quotes Sophocles in one of the intertitles. But of course it's a movie, and that necessitates a good deal of spectacle, starting with the train wreck that sets the plot in motion. La Roue is never dull, and it's sometimes emotionally affecting, but it's not an opera (although Arthur Honegger's score suggests its potential in that regard) and it's not a novel or a tragedy. It's a movie, and one with a great deal to watch if you're willing to commit seven hours to it, but I think you have to be devoted to learning about the craft of movie-making to profit much from it.   

La Roue (1923)

Abel Gance

J'accuse, Abel Gance 1919

*

avec sa Peugeot 307 affichant près d'un million de kilomètres, elle roule sur l'utilitaire de Sochaux ce jeudi

avec sa Peugeot 307 affichant près d’un million de kilomètres, elle roule sur l’utilitaire de Sochaux ce jeudi

INSOLITES Ce jeudi 26 mai, c’est le grand jour pour Fabrice Gommé et sa voiture affichant 999 320 kilomètres au compteur. Si tout se passe comme prévu, il passera le million devant les portes de Stellantis (ex-Peugeot), à Sochaux (Doubs). Où le véhicule est allé, c’était il y a cinq ans. Mis en ligne le 25/05/2022 à 22:01 Maxime Piquet La dernière ligne droite. Enfin, pas du tout d’accord. Ce…

View On WordPress

Supplice de la roue Les cartes sont sur @tire-une-carte / The cards are at @play-my-game

On est pas bien là à vivre dans une des nations les plus empoisonnées du monde 🔥

Rillieux-la-Pape, le domaine de la Roue.

if anyone needs me i will be watching movies and films 👍

“D’un homme tatoué”

Georges Terof

La Bonne Hôtesse (1926)