This was my first by Abel Gance, and it is a far cry from the declamatory epics that made his name, NAPOLEON and LA ROUE. In fact, the story is a pure Victorian melodramatic potboiler. The film opens with the heroine, gun in hand, having murdered a woman in a plush apartment, a large dog yapping about. She is Eve Dinant, a fellow traveller of the dead woman's brother, Fred Ryce, a notorious adventurer; she has had enough of their depraved lifestyle, but her 'resignation' led to a struggle and voila. She buys off the blackmailing Fred, and walks out of his life forever.
Except, of course, she doesn't. Years later, she is engaged to an acclaimed, Scriabin-like composer, Enric Damor, who worships the celestial air she walks on. He has a daughter, Claire, who ignores the advances of an aging, buffoonish aristocrat in favour of the unhealthy charms of Fred. Horrified, Eve does everything in her power to stop him, but he still has evidence of her earlier murder. Enric mistakes their enmity for passion, and writes a doleful epic bemoaning the fickleness of woman.
This story could have been seen in any Parisan theatre of the nineteenth century. Unlike the progressive melodramas of Ophuls, Sirk and Ray in the 1940s and 50s, which showed how women were socially repressed, old-fashioned melodramas had no such critical dimension; women transgressed and were punished. This seems to be the situation here. Made at a time when women didn't even have the vote, the opening scene of SYMPHONIE is startling, as Eve takes so much power that not only does she acquire phallic strength from a gun, but she takes the godlike decision to end a life.
Such social transgression must be contained and punished, and Eve is never allowed to bury her crime - she must answer for it. And so her past is literalised in the shape of Fred, who comes back to haunt her. Her attempts to 'contaminate' a decent household with concealed depravity must be foiled. The strange denouement might seem to subvert this. Of course, the real villain is Fred, an unreconstructed bounder, who just wants to cadge off others, and destroy the weak. His destruction allows normal society to regroup, and, in a Christian sense, Eve (not an accidental name)'s 'sacrifice' leads to her redemption, but also the very real rewards of family love and material wealth, usually denied the transgressor of the traditional melodrama (or, later on, the film noir).
But look at that final image of domestic harmony, as the previously rejecting Enric embraces his fiancee. He is still lost in the airy clouds that produce his music, having exercised passive but complete control., stripped her of her mystery, forgiven (ie emasculated) her transgression, her threat. The final embrace is more of a strangle than an embrace, Eve having started the movie trying to escape one masculine trap, ending it stuck in another.
Gance augments this thematic complexity with burgeoning visual mastery. It is still 1918, and the techniques of editing and composition that he would later exploit are still in their infancy here. But the sheer intensity he brings to certain scenes through jolting juxtaposing make this melodrama emotionally exciting, especially in the hysterical final stand-off.
Throughout, Gance is concerned with minimising human agency, with his absurdly stuffed interiors crouching his characters, the repeated references to the impassive gilded god, who is only a household ornament, yet somehow orchestrating events. There is a Poesque concern throughout with letters, the power of the word, the power of the individual who holds it, who is allowed to speak, or control language in society, and incriminate its transgressors. Some of the more lyrical effects are striking too - characters thoughts are compellingly visualised - eg Enric thinks of Eve, and she appears on his piano.
The theme of music, the vice-like grip of the claustrophobic plot, the lush interiors, the melodramatic situation and extreme emotions, the heroine buffeted by fate, give the film the feel of an opera (melodrama literally means music and drama), so it is only natural, this being France, that there is a ballet interlude, a bizarre mixture of the pastoral, whimsical and supernatural, completely suspending the plot, opening up new spaces.
The title presumably refers to the fact that the tenth symphony has been a bogey number for many composers, including Enric's hero Beethoven, who died having 'only' made nine. Whether this does anything than in some way mirror Eve's 'curse'. I don't know. Unlike that of Beethoven, Enric's music is not an emblem of freedom, but part of a matrix of social and cultural codes that repress Eve. This culminates in an evocative sequence where Eve and Claire at their lowest ebb of emotion and power, betrayed, or about to be, by men, gather around a statue that has been almost surrealistically prominent throughout, linking these women with a bondage that goes back millennia. Of course, it was probably sculpted by a man.
Except, of course, she doesn't. Years later, she is engaged to an acclaimed, Scriabin-like composer, Enric Damor, who worships the celestial air she walks on. He has a daughter, Claire, who ignores the advances of an aging, buffoonish aristocrat in favour of the unhealthy charms of Fred. Horrified, Eve does everything in her power to stop him, but he still has evidence of her earlier murder. Enric mistakes their enmity for passion, and writes a doleful epic bemoaning the fickleness of woman.
This story could have been seen in any Parisan theatre of the nineteenth century. Unlike the progressive melodramas of Ophuls, Sirk and Ray in the 1940s and 50s, which showed how women were socially repressed, old-fashioned melodramas had no such critical dimension; women transgressed and were punished. This seems to be the situation here. Made at a time when women didn't even have the vote, the opening scene of SYMPHONIE is startling, as Eve takes so much power that not only does she acquire phallic strength from a gun, but she takes the godlike decision to end a life.
Such social transgression must be contained and punished, and Eve is never allowed to bury her crime - she must answer for it. And so her past is literalised in the shape of Fred, who comes back to haunt her. Her attempts to 'contaminate' a decent household with concealed depravity must be foiled. The strange denouement might seem to subvert this. Of course, the real villain is Fred, an unreconstructed bounder, who just wants to cadge off others, and destroy the weak. His destruction allows normal society to regroup, and, in a Christian sense, Eve (not an accidental name)'s 'sacrifice' leads to her redemption, but also the very real rewards of family love and material wealth, usually denied the transgressor of the traditional melodrama (or, later on, the film noir).
But look at that final image of domestic harmony, as the previously rejecting Enric embraces his fiancee. He is still lost in the airy clouds that produce his music, having exercised passive but complete control., stripped her of her mystery, forgiven (ie emasculated) her transgression, her threat. The final embrace is more of a strangle than an embrace, Eve having started the movie trying to escape one masculine trap, ending it stuck in another.
Gance augments this thematic complexity with burgeoning visual mastery. It is still 1918, and the techniques of editing and composition that he would later exploit are still in their infancy here. But the sheer intensity he brings to certain scenes through jolting juxtaposing make this melodrama emotionally exciting, especially in the hysterical final stand-off.
Throughout, Gance is concerned with minimising human agency, with his absurdly stuffed interiors crouching his characters, the repeated references to the impassive gilded god, who is only a household ornament, yet somehow orchestrating events. There is a Poesque concern throughout with letters, the power of the word, the power of the individual who holds it, who is allowed to speak, or control language in society, and incriminate its transgressors. Some of the more lyrical effects are striking too - characters thoughts are compellingly visualised - eg Enric thinks of Eve, and she appears on his piano.
The theme of music, the vice-like grip of the claustrophobic plot, the lush interiors, the melodramatic situation and extreme emotions, the heroine buffeted by fate, give the film the feel of an opera (melodrama literally means music and drama), so it is only natural, this being France, that there is a ballet interlude, a bizarre mixture of the pastoral, whimsical and supernatural, completely suspending the plot, opening up new spaces.
The title presumably refers to the fact that the tenth symphony has been a bogey number for many composers, including Enric's hero Beethoven, who died having 'only' made nine. Whether this does anything than in some way mirror Eve's 'curse'. I don't know. Unlike that of Beethoven, Enric's music is not an emblem of freedom, but part of a matrix of social and cultural codes that repress Eve. This culminates in an evocative sequence where Eve and Claire at their lowest ebb of emotion and power, betrayed, or about to be, by men, gather around a statue that has been almost surrealistically prominent throughout, linking these women with a bondage that goes back millennia. Of course, it was probably sculpted by a man.