Film Review
The scars of the First World War had scarcely begun to heal before
Europe began sliding towards another, potentially even more disastrous
conflagration. Abel Gance's
J'Accuse!
(1938) was the most strident of a number of films made on the eve of
WWII that sought to revive memories of the horrors of the previous
conflict, in the hope (vain, as it turned out) of averting a similar
calamity. Unable to come up with an original conceit, Gance
plundered his previous 1919 film of the same title and, with the
advantage of sound, succeeded in giving it a frenziedly apocalyptic
feel. Looking as if it was knocked out in a hurry, this
overwrought remake is considered vastly inferior to Gance's original
film, but as an anti-war piece it is surprisingly effective. It
may not have prevented the Second World War (Gance must have been
either supremely naive or supremely arrogant to think that such a thing
could have been possible) but as a statement of mankind's tragic
propensity for war it is extremely powerful, despite some obvious
shortcomings.
J'Accuse! begins superbly and
ends horrifically. What happens in between is perhaps best
glossed over and is scarcely worth commenting on - a stodgily
indigestible dollop of melodrama that is there merely to pad the film
out to a full two hours. Gance it at his best in the first thirty
minutes of the film, which, dispensing with the mostly redundant
back-story of the original film, plunges us straight into the bubbling
cauldron of trench warfare during (as it turns out) the dying days of
WWI. The soldiers, most of whom are fated to die, are
authentically drawn and each has a story that grabs our attention and
sympathy, even those who are on screen for barely a minute. The
brutality, inhumanity and injustice of the war are eloquently expressed
through the juxtaposition of touching little vignettes and archive
footage depicting the devastation of the war. With an economy
that is rarely found in his other films, Gance gets across the terrible
human cost of warfare, and if he had ended the film after the fourth
reel he could hardly have delivered a more effective anti-war statement.
Alas, Gance didn't stop there and for the next hour we are dragged
across the dreary no man's land that is 1930s-style melodrama at its
least edifying. An unlikeably over-the-top Victor Francen goes
slowly off the rails as he devises inventions that will, ironically,
make another war more likely (can someone please explain how
bullet-proof glass is likely to prevent a war?). Meanwhile, the
daughter of his erstwhile sweetheart, whom he no longer loves out of
respect for a dead friend, has fallen for an utter cad who, not content
with turning Francen's glassmaking workshops into armaments factories,
intends stealing his inventions as a war profiteer. How this mass
of contrived nonsense was ever supposed to avert WWII is anyone's guess.
And then it becomes a zombie movie.
It's as if Abel Gance has nipped home for his lunch and George A.
Romero has suddenly taken over the shop. Grisly spectres are seen
arising from their graves, most looking very much the worse for wear,
and start creating panic in the streets in true schlock B-movie
fashion. Having tried a more humane approach at the beginning of
the film, Gance now adopts the somewhat less subtle stategy of scaring
his audience to death. Massive close-ups of partly decomposed
human cadavers loom into view, staring at us with sightless eyes (and
sometimes just bare eye sockets) in a way that screams at us the film's
title. "J'Accuse!" these decaying remnants of the Great War seem
to say as they float eerily across the screen, superimposed over the
monuments that were intended as a lasting reminder of their
sacrifice. Henri Verdun's swelling score builds to an ominous
crescendo and can only heighten the horrific impact of the film's final
sequences. "This is what's coming!", Gance's grotesque parade of
death proclaims (actually it would be another thirty years before
Romero got round to making
Night of the Living Dead).
J'Accuse! managed to get a H
(horror) classification in the UK but its nightmarish finale pales into
nothing compared with what was to be unleashed on the world over the
next six years. Abel Gance may have given French cinema its first
full-on zombie movie but when it came to imagining the misery and
suffering that WWII would bring he was way, way out of his league.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Abel Gance film:
Louise (1939)
Film Synopsis
After serving in the First World War, Jean Diaz returns to his home
town but cannot bring himself to continue his affair with Edith, the
wife of one of his fallen comrades. Instead, he resumes his life as an
inventor, dedicating himself to creating the means by which a second
catastrophic war may be avoided. As another war seems imminent,
his business partner Henri Chimay steals his inventions without his
knowing and begins manufacturing them for the war effort. When he
discovers this, Jean begins to lose his grip on reality and returns to
Verdun, intent on raising the dead from their graves...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.