La Roue (1923) - film review

A widowed railway worker, Sisif, discovers a young girl in the wreckage of a train crash.  He decides to bring the girl, Norma, up as his own, along with his son Elie who, he hopes, will one day become a great maker of violins.  Years later, when the two children have grown up, Norma reveals that she is going to marry an engineer named Hersan.  Sisif takes this news badly.  After a suicide attempt, he is blinded and demoted to a job on a funicular railway.   A chance meeting with Norma reawakens Elie’s love for his stepsister.  A jealous Hersan lures Elie to a mountain top where the two men fight to the death over Norma.  When he hears that his son is dead, Sisif is devastated…

“A tragedy for modern times” is how avant-garde director Abel Gance promoted this epic melodrama, his most ambitious production until this time.  The film originally ran to eight hours but commercial imperatives resulted in substantial cuts.  Even in its more widely distributed three hour version, the film feels slow and drawn out, and it is mainly Gance’s innovative techniques (most notably the rapid cutting in the racing train sequences) which keeps the film interesting.  Tragically, the star of the film, Severin-Mars, fell ill during the gruelling sixteen month shoot and died in 1921, a few years before the film was released.  The film cost 3 million French francs and took five years to complete, an extraordinarily risky venture at the time, and a major cause of anxiety for the film’s production company, Pathé.


© James Travers 2005

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