Film Review
And so ends the illustrious filmmaking career of Abel Gance, one of
France's most revered and influential cineastes.
His third colour feature,
Cyrano et d'Artagnan was among Gance's
more ambitious productions, bringing together three great French
literary works - Edmond Rostand's
Cyrano
de Bergerac, Alexandre Dumas's
Les
Trois Mousquetaires and Victor Hugo's
Marion Delorme - into one
flamboyant swashbuckling epic. Gance did make one further film
after this, the epic drama-documentary
Bonaparte et la
revolution (1971), but this was largely a re-edit of his earlier
1927 masterpiece
Napoléon.
Whilst it is hard not to be impressed by the scale and sheer
cinematographic beauty of
Cyrano et
d'Artagnan, it is a pretty taxing film, marred
by its dull characterisation and leaden pacing.
For a combination of budgetary and artistic reasons,
Gance made use of foreign actors, including the American actor
José Ferrer, who had previously played Cyrano de Bergerac in
Michael Gordon's 1950 adaptation of Rostand's play (for which Ferrer
won an Oscar). Consequently, most of the dialogue is dubbed,
rendering the film coldly static and artificial. With lengthy
dialogue exchanges and protracted action sequences, the film feels
painfully slow in places, whilst some of Gance's attempts to inject
some originality - such as some experimental use of the camera -
backfire horribly. When it was first released, the film was torn
to pieces by the critics and was a commercial disaster for its
director, effectively ending his career. It may not be Abel
Gance's best film, but
Cyrano et
d'Artagnan does have a certain charm, and it isn't such a bad
parting shot from one of the most iconic film directors
of the 20th century - a more than respectable companion piece to his
previous historical romps
Le Capitaine Fracasse (1943)
and
La Tour de Nesle (1955).
© James Travers 2008
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Next Abel Gance film:
La Folie du Docteur Tube (1915)
Film Synopsis
In 1642, France is in a state of political turmoil. Louis XIII is the
king in name only. The real power lies with Cardinal Richelieu, whose
battles with the Marquis de Cinq-Mars have resulted in a growing rift between
the king and his queen, Anne of Austria, threatening the peace of the nation.
On the road from his Gascogne to Paris, Cyrano de Bergerac meets D'Artagnan
and they are struck by how much they have in common. They are both
25, they come from the same region and they seek to make their fortune in
Paris. Inevitably, they soon become the best of friends, but their
friendship will be put to the test once they reach Paris. Cyrano de
Bergerac puts himself at the service of the king, D'Artagnan allies himself
with the queen. Who better than these two emblems of French chivalry
to thwart the dangerous political ambitions of Cinq-Mars and restore unity
to a divided country?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.