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La roue More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 12 reviews in total |
21 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
recommendation, 21 November 2006
Author:
rschmeec from United States
Gance seems overwhelmed by the theme of humanity crushed by incredible
suffering, and some of the symbolism may seem heavy-handed, but this
film deserves to be listed among the greats for its wonderful
cinematography, the strong contrasts between the first parts portrayal
of trains and the second parts moving to the beautiful, impassive
scenery of the high Alps.
I have always been an admirer of Gance's Napoleon, but his J'accuse
turned me off. La Roue has restored my desire to see the others: La fin
de monde, Beethoven, and Austerlitz.
As for the suffering, this was made in 1921 in the aftermath of WW I,
which is sufficient to account for Gance's obsession with the theme.
15 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Classic, 20 June 2008
Author:
Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY
Roue, La (1923)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
French master Abel Gance's 260-minute epic tells the story of Sisif
(Severin-Mars), a railroad worker who discovers a young girl named
Norma after a horrible train wreck. Sisif takes the girl home to his
young son Elie where he plans on raising them as brother and sister.
Flash forward several years and Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) has started
to fall in love with Norma (Ivy Close) even though he thinks she is his
sister. At the same time Sisif has also fallen in love with her, which
leads the two men down a road of tragedy. A lot of the epic films
released after The Birth of a Nation dealt with epic themes, usually
something to do with war, but that's not the case here as you would
call this a film that deals in melodrama and character study. It's
rather amazing that Gance would try to take this material and push it
to over eight hours, which was the original running time. I was a
little worried going into this version, running 260-minutes but it
turned out to be a great beauty of a film. I really don't think the
film ran too long and in fact, the running time goes by quite fast but
the only thing I'd question is some of the stuff that we go through two
or three times. This includes one character attempting suicide numerous
times and I think this could have been handled in a different way. The
legendary editing is the main highlight of this film as it goes in a
maniac style way. There are numerous edits each second during certain
scenes and I'm really not sure if it could be done better even with
today's standards. Even though the editing is quite sharp and fast, it
never gets in the way of the story trying to be told. Another
fascinating aspect is when the main character starts to go blind. The
director then turns the visuals on screen to an all white setting to
where we're seeing things just like the character who is going blind.
the final sequences of the film are quite beautiful and haunting and
really puts everything we've seen before it into justice. I think for
the most part that the performances are good but I think at times the
director would have been wise to bring them down a little bit.
Severin-Mars really steals the film as the love struck father who is
slowly losing his mind, life and eyes due to the love his has for the
girl he raised as his daughter. Close gives the weakest performance of
the three but she still handles the screen quite well. La Roue is
certainly a demanding film to sit through but at the end of the film I
was quite happy to take the ride and this is certainly a film that
every film buff should see at least once in their life.
5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Wheels, not words, 12 September 2011
Author:
chaos-rampant from Greece
Okay, as I am discovering, the name of Abel Gance as has reached us
through a long and troubled historiography is mostly in the contours of
a European DW Griffith; the broad historic scopes, the elaborate film
language. But whereas Griffith's pioneering efforts were narrowed by a
set of Victorian ideals about a world where good and evil are clearly
defined and the prevalent Western thinking that has traditionally
regarded the struggle between these two fractions in rational, linear
terms as the forward struggle of human thought to achieve enlightenment
from the forces of darkness - the forces of production or state morals
for Griffith - Gance foresaw deeper: objects cast their shadow here,
human beings have interior dimensions, and the darkness no longer
threatens from outside but is recast inside the human character.
This is the film that Kurosawa fondly remembered as one of the first to
impress him. So, a film that resonated within Japanese culture of the
time, a culture that has increasingly sought out and adopted - long
before the westerns of John Ford - Western perspectives in their
traditionally abstract eye.
But the more obvious stuff before we get there, how the film must have
equally well impressed the early Soviet filmmakers. There may not be
crowds animating, acting out rigorous ideals - not history as in
Griffith, but present action, history in the making - but there is a
shift; the Shakespearian tragedy, and thus the cleansing, high-minded
catharsis, now transferred to the working class, so that the new
Oedipus, the new Lear or Sissyphus, the new king punished with divine
madness becomes the insignificant railroad engineer - named Sisif no
less - with the perennially greasy, coalblack face. It is now the lowly
and disenchanted whose life agonies can be imbued, and given voice to,
with the majesty of a world ruler; hence the ruled world, the kingly
dominion, is reordered as the private life of organized anxieties.
So, this part of the film should bode well with a contemporary
audience, who can also better acquiesce to the idea of a film that runs
for 4 1/2 hours. But there is stuff that matters more, I believe.
See here. Sisif's house is situated where the tracks converge and
disperse from again, so at the navel of the soul. At regular intervals
fates depart from there - some of them the desperate attempts to
destroy the self, others harboring omens or disaster.
But once up in the exile of the mountains, the house - now the
hermitage, the temple of atonement - is where the tracks lead and stop.
There is no going further, and there are some amazing shots of snowed
mountain peaks captured from a moving train that you will want to see.
Here, the protagonists must struggle with a karma that is not possible
to extricate without the dissolution of the self that is the essence of
spiritual transformation.
The poignant image that unifies vision; wheels, wheels turning fates in
the incessant cycle of life-renewing destruction. The Soviets
appropriated this image - as well as the rapid-fire montage pioneered
here by Gance - as a representation of social mechanisms at work; but
here the image is properly internal, in-sight into abstract soul.
The heartfelt denouement is about the last - and hence, first - turn of
the wheel, the cosmic round of succession of an impermanent, transient
universe. It's all pretty obvious at this point, which maybe derails
the more powerful metaphors into a typically classical story end.
So this is probably why the film spoke with clarity to the Japanese,
whose world is not linear but vivid impressions from a bird's eye. At
the end, a circle of young girls and boys dance away in the shadow of
the mountain; like in so many Japanese landscape paintings where
idyllic everyday pleasures among the cherry-blossomed trees unfold
beneath the distant horizon of Mt. Fuji.
Gance shows how the final release from the round can only begin with
the acceptance of suffering. It is a Buddhist image, whereby this
darkness recast inside the human character is finally understood to be
no different from light.
We may encounter it in a jodo temple as the bodhisattva
Kannon-Avalokitesvara, who reconciles both male and female form - and
so all human disparity - in singular, unbound mercy; the name in her
female form, poignantly as ever with the Japanese rendered into picture
language, means 'Observing the Sounds (or Cries) of the World'. So, not
the person who observes, but the act, the living process of the round -
filled with the cries of suffering - as it comes into being and goes
again.
Asides into meditation. But the film is boss as is.
12 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Beautiful but much too long for this sort of melodrama, 14 July 2008
Author:
dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Abel Gance's monstrously long tale of a train engineer. his son and the
girl he takes in and raises as his own. Clocking in at four and a half
hours this is still only a fraction of the the three part close to
eight hour version that Gance originally created. I won't go into the
story of the three years of filming and the tragedies that struck
during the filming of the movie, which would make a wonderful film unto
itself.
The story begins when Sisif returns to work one day just as a train
wrecks in the yard. He pulls a young girl, Norma, from the wreckage and
adopts her as his own, bringing her home to live with him and his son.
The children are small enough that they simply assume that they are
brother and sister. Later as time goes on the children grow, but the
family remains in poverty thanks in part to Sisif's drinking and
gambling. He is secretly in love with his "daughter" as his his son who
makes a living making violins. Also in love with Norma is a well placed
engineer who is helping to keep Sisif safe and out of trouble so that
he might wed her. As the wheel of life turns and crushes those in its
way the lives of everyone take unexpected and not very happy turns.
I'm at sixes and sevens about the film. Certainly its dated badly in
some regards. the actor playing Sisif often looks into the camera and
plays directly to the audience in a style thats at best over done. Some
sequences are clearly unreal. Many interiors were filmed outside since
you can see the shifting sun lighting them. And the film is simply put
way way way too long at four and a half hours (I can not imagine what
the full cut was like).
And yet the film has power at times that is undeniable. The film has a
sense of place that can not be matched. Its clear that this was filmed
in and around the train yards where it all takes place. The sense of
reality is probably is almost unmatched in any film. The photography
and montage is among the finest I've ever seen. There are shots of
trains running on the rails that need to be hung on walls. Additionally
the way the film is cut together is unlike any other film. No one
manages to cut like this, I can't imagine what this was like in 1923.
The images in images (The scenes of Norma in the train smoke for
example) are haunting- more so when you think of how Gance had to put
together pretty much in camera. From a technical stand point the quote
about the film that's in the publicity for the DVD restoration about
how the movie changed after this film is probably dead on. Technically
this is like watching lightning. The story is, while melodramatic and
potboiler like, affecting and had the film not dragged on as long as it
did I would have probably loved the film instead of liked it.
Is it worth seeing? If you're a cinema nut absolutely. Its amazing at
times. If you're not a fan of film and really don't like silent film
stay away from it because it will probably overwhelm you in the wrong
way.
Between 6 and 7 out of 10- with moments that are off the scale.
14 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
Watching the wheels, 6 May 2006
Author:
dbdumonteil
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Let's put is straight: "la roue" is a very long movie and ,in spite of
its very high rating,it's not for all tastes.It was initially an
eight-hour movie,the IMDb gives a 273 min running time ,but the version
which circulates in France does not exceed three hours:is that all?
Unlike "J'accuse" and "Napoleon" ,I would
not go as far as to say that "La roue" has not aged a bit.For it
has,particularly the screenplay which consists of a dreadful
melodrama.As a story teller ,Gance does not equal his American
counterpart David Wark Griffith whose "Intolerance' (the "modern"
segments) might have influenced him.
Gance's work ,even cut to three hours is still too long and its several
incredible moments get buried in the whole .Because ,technically,the
film is often a tour de force: the train accident will take your breath
away;the way Gance blends his characters with the things which surround
them was innovative. .He does not forget fantasizing: the stained-glass
window which gives birth to a three-dimensional world where Elie and
Norma can live an imaginary happy life which they will never know.His
death in the mountains.Sisif's silhouette ,his big cross on his
shoulder ,climbing a Golgotha-like peak.But I would put the last scene
above all:Sisif is dying and a small engine falls from his hand;he has
hallucinations as a giant train appears in the sky;and a group of
mountaineers ,dancing in a ring,and going away ,becoming a tiny
circle.....the final wheel.
8 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Beautifully made movie!, 14 July 2007
Author:
Boba_Fett1138 from Groningen, The Netherlands
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This is not only a greatly made and constructed movie with a nice
story, it's also visually a great one to watch, with lots of style in
it and with some wonderful cinematography. The movie even features some
early moving camera shots.
The train-crash in the beginning of the movie (which is a real classic
in my book!) is brought really great to the screen, with some nice fast
cuts to build up the tension. It's done in a way you normally wouldn't
expect from a '20's movie. The movie features a couple of more
sequences like this. Apparently this is the First ever movie that
features 'rapid' editing in it, a technique pioneered by Abel Gance.
The movie doesn't use that many title cards and the movie mostly uses
its images to speak for itself. It's perhaps also one of the reasons
why the movie is much longer (depending on which version you're
watching of course) than most others but it Works pleasant that the
movie doesn't use that many title cards. It makes the movie a real
visual orientated one and its, once again, fast editing makes sure that
the movie never drags and no sequences ever become overlong, with of
course still a couple of exceptions here and there.
The movie is made with lots of style and the directing is great. It
features some great style filled sequences such as a couple of
'dream-like' sequences, point-of-view shots, use of shadows only and
use of mirrors, among many other things.
The story itself is original, even today. It's basically a love-story
but an unusual one, when both father and son (among others) fall for
the same girl, who also happens to be the adopted daughter. It provides
the movie with some nice typical (melodramatic) genre elements that all
feel original and well conceived. Especially the way the father gets
torn and confused by the love for the girl is done in a great way,
although the whole part when the father tries to commit suicide gets
perhaps stretched out a bit too much. The movie takes some nice
dramatic twists that also add to the movie its originality. Abel Glance
obviously also knew how to tell a story well! The last third of the
movie is definitely the most powerful. Lots of dramatic events occur
that work out really well. Also the ending is definitely one worth
remembering!
The movie is obviously old fashioned and so it the acting. Totally
unacceptable by todays standards of course but it adds all the more to
the movie its nostalgic and classic feeling of the earliest days of
cinema.
A must-see for every movie lover! Absolutely one of the greatest!
10/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
19 out of 36 people found the following review useful:
An amazing but practically unwatchable film!, 18 May 2008
Author:
planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This film is a very, very, very long movie about a railroad engineer
who's infatuated with his adoptive daughter. While somewhat incestuous
and creepy, it gets worse as her brother who does NOT know that she
isn't his biological sister also falls for her! In fact, practically
every man around this sweet young lady goes mad and is willing to kill
to possess her!
This is a very hard film to rate and I am sure I'll irritate legions of
old movie buffs when I say that despite LA ROUE being an amazing film
with wonderful cinematography, it is also a MAJOR chore to force
yourself to watch the entire film. I really feel sorry for the initial
audiences for the movie, as it was an 8 1/2 hour film! Then, because no
sane audience wanted to see such an interminably long film, it was
trimmed to 5 hours. Today, a recently restored version is almost 4
hours--and in my opinion, this is STILL way too long. An hour and a
half EASILY could have been trimmed, as the film had way too many
lengthy shots of nothing in particular, artsy shots, scenes and plot
elements that were irrelevant and scenes that just went on too long. I
understand that this was Abel Gance's artistic vision, but he just
didn't exercise restraint. The film still desperately needed a good
editing.
The same dilemma exists when you hear discussions about Erich Von
Stroheim's GREED. For years on IMDb, I have watched the silent film
board abound with comments about how sad it is that his original 9 hour
film no longer exists. Von Stroheim threw a giant temper tantrum back
in 1924 when the studio insisted it be trimmed because of a stupid need
to actually make money from his 30003023 reel behemoth and ever since
people in the know have longed to see the original. Well, I saw the
shortened version of GREED and it was a pretty good film--thus making
me some sort of Neanderthal.
Now I am NOT saying all films need to be short--I love a good 3 hour
epic and have even seen the Russian version of WAR AND PEACE twice and
it's almost 7 hours long. Heck, I saw both mini-series WAR AND
REMEMBRANCE and WINDS OF WAR (at about 32 hours long), so I like long
things if there's a need. A film about the origins of WWII and WWII
itself justified the excessive length.
So what am I trying to say? Well, long is just fine when the plot will
sustain it and there is a legitimate reason to make such a long and
complex film. Films about very, very complex events justify being long.
A rather simple plot like you have in LA ROUE about a rather crazed
man's infatuation with his adopted daughter just didn't justify so many
reels of film.
The bottom line is that while I respect LA ROUE for being so
ground-breaking, beautiful to watch and artfully made, it just made me
want to watch it on DVD while using the fast forward button! Okay,
silent film snobs--get ready with the "not helpful" comments! Before
you slam me, do understand that I have watched and reviewed more silent
films than practically anyone so far on IMDb, so I DON'T hate
silents--I love them in fact. It's just that I couldn't for the life of
me encourage non-silent lovers to watch LA ROUE--as it will probably
make them think that silent films are bad or outdated. There are so
many great silent films waiting to be seen and only a very, very
patient audience could possibly sit through this film.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Grand Filmmaking: sometimes brilliant, sometimes a slog, 27 July 2011
Author:
jrd_73 from United States
Abel Gance is not a filmmaker who thinks small. There is something to
be said for a master filmmaker (for Gance clearly is a master) pursuing
his vision at all cost. In subject matter, La Roue possess similar
qualities to early 20th Century realist novels. Frank Norris comes to
mind. Of course Norris's novel McTeague was the subject of another
grand visionary director, Erich Von Stroheim.
Sisif, an engineer, a "man of the rails," finds an orphaned child after
a railroad crash. He takes this child, Norma, home to raise as his own,
alongside his son Elie. Fifteen years pass, Norma grows into a
beautiful, free-spirited woman. Sisif begins to look at his adopted
daughter in a way that is very unfatherly, nor is he alone in his
desire. Elie, Sisif's son, seems to have feelings for his "sister,"
feelings Norma shares. Uncontrolled passions lead to tragedy until the
(somewhat) optimistic ending. The film's first half takes place either
in the family home surrounded by rails or around the railyards. The
background of the railroad, with its grime and smoke, does add to the
ambiance of the film. The second half is largely set in the snow
covered alps. Both halves possess a realism due to the locations.
There are sections in La Roue that rank among the best in silent
cinema. My favorite is the sequence where Norma leaves for Paris, a
sequence about halfway through the film. She says goodbye to her home
in a series of beautifully poetic shots. Then, she boards a train
driven by her "father." En route, a fit of jealousy consumes Sisif. He
plans to crash the train. What follows is a series of fast edits that
are as advanced as anything used by the Russians from this time period.
It is hard not to be awed by the sequence. Nor, is this the only one.
La Roue has about half a dozen such eye-popping moments. It also
features a moving finale that seems earned.
It should also be noted that La Roue, even in the shortened cut that
remains, runs four hours and twenty minutes. It cannot be watched
casually! I spent one whole day with Flicker Alley's DVD, homebound due
to an aching leg and a reeling stomach. Others may not have the
infirmity (and the patience) for that type of commitment. I can
understand. The running time, even shortened, is overly generous for
the story told. There are sections that drag. A certain repetitious
quality hurts the film (one character tries three separate times to
kill himself with a train). La Roue is not an epic like Lawrence of
Arabia, or, rather, La Roue is an intimate epic, about people, about
desire, and about despair. Most certainly the story did not need the
indulgent running time, but I'm glad the film exists just as an example
of a filmmaker going for broke. I even felt my day was well spent, even
if the idea of watching La Roue in its entirety a second time seems
more like combat than entertainment.
4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Heavy-handed, 28 October 2010
Author:
fubared1 from Boston, Ma
Forget all the pedantic pseudo-psychobable and bargain-basement 'philosophy' you may read here. The bottom line is that while this film is extremely well crafted for it's time period, ultimately it is four and a half hours of heavy-handed nonsense. Pure depression from beginning to end. In fact, I too felt like committing suicide after watching it. So why these characters don't just go out and do it themselves is beyond me. Just when you think things couldn't get worse, they do. And there is no humor to lighten the load. At least 'Hamlet' had it's grave digger scene. There is a great deal of poetry in the images, and the overlapping images and quick cutting were unique trademarks of Gance's style for the time. Gance is obviously a master of his craft, one just wishes the film weren't so long, repetitive and heavy-handed in the end. And why are all these men obsessed with Ivy Close? Aside from the fact that she was Gance's wife, one cannot understand the obsession all these men have for her. I guess one had to be living in that time period.
Too Long, Too Dark - but interesting, 29 March 2012
Author:
romarub from East Rockaway, NY
I agree with just about everything that's been written in the reviews (many of which, however, seem as monstrously long as the film, itself!). I think it was my interest in trains and railroading that sustained me for 4-1/2 hours, although the characters and action were interesting, if too, too progressively dark, dark. Those locomotive models were particularly interesting to me - so sad when that locomotive slipped from Sisif's hands . . . . That "slide valve vaporization" device that Sisif was working on caught my attention at once, but I'm not clear if the civil engineer, Hersan, profited by getting credit for it. Overall, a fascinating, if overlong, ride!
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