punishmentpark I don't watch silent films quite as often as I should, but this one reminds me I should try harder once more. Most praises I've read about (this one), go out to the third and final act, which is absolutely understandable, but I was very impressed with the hour and fifty minutes before that also. How the relationship between Jean and François changes was most impressively done, both by story and by acting (especially Séverin-Mars, who plays the latter, while Romuald Joubé deserves special credit for his part in act three, when he loses his mind).This war- and love-story works on many levels. It deals with the horrors of war, but also how man (and woman and child) can overcome - though obviously not without scars. The part of the child that was conceived through rape is especially harrowing, but the love of Jean and Edith helps even the raging soldier François to gain understanding of true love - though the scene in which the child must play a German soldier with the French kids is again hard to watch.The words 'J'accuse' return many times in the film, but who is really accused in the first part of the film? The war ministers in their safe retreats, one would say? When we witness one them being struck personally by a (war) tragedy, we must conclude no. The words 'I accuse' are more likely the perfectly logical way of expressing one's desire to blame someone - anyone - for all miseries that may come about in life; in war, ánd in love. When finally Jean looks out his window and blames the sun, this seems to substantiate that idea; it is an angry, desperate rant against a 'thing' which will burn no less when it is addressed. Of course I do not mean to dismiss here the part just before that, in which the returning dead army ghosts accuse their close ones of betrayal in various ways, but their accusations are instantly cathartic to all, and both the survivors and the dead may carry on. So, I'd like to doubt the reviews I've read about this film being anti-war, Abel Gance 'simply' seems to say that horrors of these kind had better be worth the while...? Just my two cents after this first viewing.Then there is an owl (symbol of the night) who acts as the prophet of war, someone resembling 'Astérix le Gaulois' as a symbol of bravery on the side of the French soldiers, beautiful visualizations of a book of poems called 'Les pacifiques', and so on. I can't say I fully understood all of it, but I did enjoy pretty much all of it; who is then really bothered when someone looks into the camera now and then (accidentally, I presume) or when there seem to be some wrongly cut short bits here and there (again, accidentally, I presume)? And, perhaps strangely, but it worked somehow, there is room for some humourImpressive, to say the least. A big 8 out of 10.

Ron in LA The 2006 restoration of this amazing 1919 film presents one of the very best opportunities to learn about the period from watching a contemporaneous film. Aesthetically, it stands on its own merit as a completely engaging and emotional piece, which on the whole deserves a much wider audience. The restoration drops whatever there was of a phony happy ending in the 1922 re-release, and adds an excellent score by Robert Israel. Israel scores are a quick tip that a silent film has been given a sensitive and elegant restoration that will be very palatable to modern tastes.The story is a complex family/romantic melodrama built around a poet in love with a woman trapped in a bad marriage to a violent man. With the war, the two men become comrades in arms, and complications ensue. (I really dislike reviews that go on and on telling the film's story. If someone is going to watch the movie, it is up to the director to tell the story in his own style and at his own pace.) I believe the film is mischaracterized as an anti-war film. No one is really for war, so a realistic film like this by a veteran and using real footage will include a lot of pathos that will serve the purpose of an anti-war message. But everyone is anti-war, the difference between a pro-war and and an anti-war film is that a pro-war film blames the war on the enemy and creates situations for nobility based on service of the just cause. An anti-war film turns the proponents of war into greedy liars, emphasizes the humanity of the enemy, and creates situations for nobility based on refusal to participate in the war. So defined, this piece (like The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse - 1921) is a pro-war film.

sosuttle Last Saturday -- December 12, 2009 -- was the actual North American premier of this wonderful film in its entirety at the winter edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Nederlands Filmmuseum and Lobster Films' fine efforts have resulted in a restoration of the European release print as Abel Gance intended for the movie to be seen; indeed, as it was seen in France and Britian in 1919. They combined six different prints including one original camera negative and one print with original tinting to produce a truly stunning cinematic triumph. I, as many of you have, had seen the version edited for American release, but this print simply took my breath. It is rich and full. The additional material fully advances the narrative. Gance's strident message of the uselessness and futility of war comes to full flower and is even more disturbing than was evident from earlier,incomplete releases. The expanded performances of Severin-Mars, Marise Dauvray, and Romuald Joube fill in the previous gaps in the story. Young and pretty Angele Guys is all the more angelic in this version which includes the heartbreaking taunting she receives at the hands of playmates when they discover she is the bastard product of a German soldiers' gang rape. Gance's use of quick-cutting and montage presages that of Eisenstein and with this release it is even more apparent that Gance was certainly one of the handful of early pioneering geniuses of the cinema. All in all this restoration is truly wonderful. If you don't have the recently released DVD in your library, you do not have a complete collection of the greatest silent films. As I've written before on these pages, if you've never attended the San Francisco Silent Film Festival you are -- as our teachers used to say --only cheating yourself! It is very well run and held in the Castro Theater, a beautifully preserved movie palace. The Festival is indeed one of the premier film events in the world.

Enrique Sanchez It's hard to describe the images you will see in this film. They cut to the very core of the most horrific results of war. It is a fantasy which will leave you with images that will not leave you.Any mention of the particulars here might spoil the experience of this great silent offering.