BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.
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- TriviaOriginally broadcast in the UK as the 19th episode of the long running BBC arts programme Omnibus (1967).
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how little we then knew!
While agreeing by and large with the other reviewers about the poor quality of the documentary, it is nevertheless an astonishing testimony to how greatly our knowledge and understanding of silent film has increased since 1968.
This after all was made by THE Kevin Brownlow, the man responsible for the successive meticulous reconstructions of Gance's Napoléon (and I can well remember the sensation that caused by the first 1980s version) and also the man who in more recent times has provided superb documentaries. Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980) which still does not entirely escape the existing US mythology on the subject but makes some remarkable steps in the right direction as well as providing invaluable interviews with a galaxy of silent heroes who nearly all, rather spookily, died within a few years of the film (almost as though they had solely remained alive and, for the most part, on remarkable form, in order to make that film). Then (Brownlow's crowning glory) Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) where finally we really begin have a full picture of the achievement of the silent era. And finally an honorary Oscar in 2010 "for the wise and devoted chronicling of the cinematic parade" whatever on earth that may mean. Cinematic parade??!!!?
There are of course some good things here (essentially the interviews with Gance and Dieudonné and the archive footage all of which it would be good to see in better quality) but it is almost comical to see how it was then necessary to explain everything and yet say so little about films that are now universally regarded as great classics of the cinema. It is hard now to conceive that in 1968 virtually no one had seen any of these films.
So, if one begins with Commencini's La valigia dei sogni (1953), the sad, sad story of a man who spends his time trying to save silent films (fragment by fragment) from the shredder and a film way,w ay ahead of its time in appreciating the value and importance of the then fast disappearing heritage. Then this cranky little documentary of 1968 where Brownlow seems not yet even to understand the importance of showing silent films at the correct speed. Then the incredibly belated academic awakening in the 1980s (with noble exceptions of course).....and one begins to appreciate what an extraordinary revolution has occurred.
There is an extremely good account of the making of Napoléon, Nelly Kaplan's 1983 documentary Abel Gance et son Napoléon.
This after all was made by THE Kevin Brownlow, the man responsible for the successive meticulous reconstructions of Gance's Napoléon (and I can well remember the sensation that caused by the first 1980s version) and also the man who in more recent times has provided superb documentaries. Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980) which still does not entirely escape the existing US mythology on the subject but makes some remarkable steps in the right direction as well as providing invaluable interviews with a galaxy of silent heroes who nearly all, rather spookily, died within a few years of the film (almost as though they had solely remained alive and, for the most part, on remarkable form, in order to make that film). Then (Brownlow's crowning glory) Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) where finally we really begin have a full picture of the achievement of the silent era. And finally an honorary Oscar in 2010 "for the wise and devoted chronicling of the cinematic parade" whatever on earth that may mean. Cinematic parade??!!!?
There are of course some good things here (essentially the interviews with Gance and Dieudonné and the archive footage all of which it would be good to see in better quality) but it is almost comical to see how it was then necessary to explain everything and yet say so little about films that are now universally regarded as great classics of the cinema. It is hard now to conceive that in 1968 virtually no one had seen any of these films.
So, if one begins with Commencini's La valigia dei sogni (1953), the sad, sad story of a man who spends his time trying to save silent films (fragment by fragment) from the shredder and a film way,w ay ahead of its time in appreciating the value and importance of the then fast disappearing heritage. Then this cranky little documentary of 1968 where Brownlow seems not yet even to understand the importance of showing silent films at the correct speed. Then the incredibly belated academic awakening in the 1980s (with noble exceptions of course).....and one begins to appreciate what an extraordinary revolution has occurred.
There is an extremely good account of the making of Napoléon, Nelly Kaplan's 1983 documentary Abel Gance et son Napoléon.
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- Runtime51 minutes
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Top Gap
By what name was Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite (1968) officially released in Canada in English?
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