Abel Gance was a French film director, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and Napoléon (1927).

He was born in Paris in 1889. In 1909, he acted in his first film. He also wrote scenarios, and often sold them to Gaumont. During this period he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, fatal at the time, but he recovered. In 1911, with some friends he established a production company, Le Film Français, and began directing his own films.

With the outbreak of WW I, rejected by the army on medical grounds, he started writing and directing for a new film company, Film d'Art until 1918, making over a dozen successful films. Charles Pathé underwrote his next film, J'accuse (1919), in which Gance confronted the waste and suffering which the war had brought.

In 1920, he developed La Roue. He brought an unprecedented level of energy and imagination to the technical realization of his story, employing elaborate editing techniques and innovative use of rapid cutting which made the film highly influential. The finished film ran for nearly nine hours, but was edited down for distribution.

In 1921, Gance visited America to promote J'accuse. He met D. W. Griffith, whom he had long admired. He was also offered a contract with MGM but turned it down.

He then embarked on his greatest project, a six-part life of Napoléon. Only the first part was completed, tracing his early life, through the Revolution, up to the invasion of Italy, but even this occupied a vast canvas with meticulously recreated historical scenes and scores of characters. The film was full of experimental techniques, combining rapid cutting, hand-held cameras, superimposition of images, and, in wide-screen sequences, shot using a system he called Polyvision needing triple cameras (and projectors), achieved a spectacular panoramic effect, including a finale in which the outer two film panels were tinted blue and red, creating a widescreen image of a French flag. The original version ran for around 6 hours. A shortened version received a triumphant première at the Paris Opéra in April 1927.

Throughout his life he kept returning to Napoléon, editing his footage, and as a result the original 1927 film was lost from view for decades. The dedicated work of the film historian Kevin Brownlow produced a five-hour version, still incomplete but fuller than anyone had seen since the 1920s. It was presented at the Telluride Film Festival in 1979, and the occasion brought a belated triumph to Gance's career, and made his name known to a worldwide audience.

In the assessment of Kevin Brownlow, "...[Abel Gance] made a fuller use of the medium than anyone before or since". As well as his multiscreen ventures with Polyvision, he explored the use of superimposition of images, extreme close-ups, fast rhythmic editing, and he made the camera mobile in unorthodox ways – hand-held, mounted on wires or a pendulum, or even strapped to a horse. He also made early experiments with the addition of sound to film, and with filming in color and in 3-D. There were few aspects of film technique that he did not seek to incorporate in his work, and his influence was acknowledged by contemporaries and later by the French New Wave film-makers.

Abel Perthon, dit Abel Gance, est un réalisateur, scénariste et producteur français, né le 25 octobre 1889 à Paris et mort le 10 novembre 1981 dans la même ville. Il fut un pionnier du langage cinématographique.

Abel Eugène Alexandre Perthon naît le 25 octobre 1889 dans le 18e arrondissement de Paris. Il a, par sa mère, Françoise Perthon, une origine bourbonnaise. Il passe une partie de sa petite enfance à Commentry (Allier) chez ses grands-parents, et part à Paris où il étudie dans un collège catholique puis au lycée Chaptal. Il commence des études de droit, les abandonne pour se consacrer au théâtre et à la poésie.

Il obtient en 1908 un engagement au théâtre royal du Parc à Bruxelles et effectue quelques tournées théâtrales en France. Il publie un recueil de poèmes intitulé Un doigt sur le clavier et commence à s'intéresser au cinéma en faisant de la figuration dans quelques films à partir de 1909. C'est Léonce Perret qui lui confie son premier rôle important au cinéma — celui de Jean-Baptiste Poquelin — dans son film Molière sorti en 1909. Il écrit quelques scénarios pour Léonce Perret — Le Portrait de Mireille (1909), La Fille de Jephté (1910) — pour Camille de Morlhon — L'Auberge rouge (1912) — ou encore pour Albert Capellani — Un clair de lune sous Richelieu (1911), Un tragique amour de Mona Lisa (1912).

En 1911, il fonde la société de production Le Film français et réalise son premier film — La Digue — la même année. De 1911 à 1917, il signe une quinzaine de films qui le font connaître du public français, parmi lesquels on peut citer Le Nègre blanc (1912), La Fleur des ruines (1915), Ce que les flots racontent (1916) ou encore Mater Dolorosa (1917).

Le 9 mars 1912, Ciné-Journal publie le premier écrit théorique connu d'Abel Gance sur le cinéma: Qu'est-ce que le cinématographe? Un sixième art!

Dès 1918, il s'affirme comme un cinéaste novateur, dont le style empreint de lyrisme tranche sur la production de l'époque. J'accuse et La Roue font de lui un réalisateur reconnu, tandis que Napoléon est l'un des derniers grands succès français du cinéma muet. Mais le grave échec financier de La Fin du monde, en 1931, brise sa carrière.

Il est amené à tourner des films moins personnels et, bien que sa carrière compte des succès commerciaux comme Lucrèce Borgia (1935) — qui fit scandale car Edwige Feuillère y apparaissait nue et fut attaqué par la Ligue pour le relèvement de la moralité publique — ou l'année suivante Un grand amour de Beethoven (1936) avec Harry Baur, ou encore J'accuse (1938) avec Victor Francen (remake parlant du film de 1919), Paradis Perdu (1940) très admiré par François Truffaut et qui lance Micheline Presle, La Tour de Nesle (1955) ou Austerlitz (1960) au casting international et reconstituant magistralement la célèbre bataille en studio (avec Henri Alekan à la photographie), il ne retrouve jamais le prestige qui était le sien. ...

Source: Article "Abel Gance" de Wikipédia en français, soumis à la licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Abel Gance (Paris, 25 de outubro de 1889 — Paris, 10 de novembro de 1981) foi um cineasta, produtor e editor de filmes, escritor e ator francês.

Gance era filho ilegítimo. Seus pais queriam que ele se tornasse um advogado, mas desde a infância Gance foi atraído pelo teatro. Ele fez sua primeira apresentação como ator em Bruxelas com a idade de 19 anos e atuou em seu primeiro filme em 1909 em Molière.

Ele continuou atuando e escrevendo roteiros antes de formar a sua própria companhia de produção em 1911. No mesmo ano, ele fez seu primeiro filme, La Digue, mas foi um fracasso. Sua nova produção, Victoire de Samothrace, no qual ele apareceria ao lado de Sarah Bernhardt, foi cancelado com a eclosão da Primeira Guerra Mundial.

Devido à sua frágil saúde, Gance conseguiu não participar da maior parte da guerra e ele retornou a fazer filmes, agora com mais sucesso. Em 1919, ele obteve o reconhecimento internacional com seu filme épico de três horas J’Accuse, um filme contra a guerra que incluiu cenas de batalhas ao longo do fim da Primeira Guerra. O filme usou técnicas experimentais que Gance desenvolveria mais tarde em seu filme maior, Napoléon (1927). O sucesso desse filme foi prejudicado pela duração de seis horas e por necessitar de equipamentos de projeção de filmes especiais para mostrá-lo, particularmente na sua parte final onde a tela triplica em tamanho para mostrar um panorama chocante de um campo de batalha.

Um filme de orçamento pequeno e filme secundário, Vénus aveugle (1941), sobre um casal, uma tragédia de barco e fantasia, mostra uma terrível tendência para os efeitos melodramáticos e o constante desejo para a criação de um poderoso imaginário poético. O filme tem muita quebra de continuidade.

Gance não conseguiu fazer bem a transição do filme mudo para o falado. Embora ele tenha continuado a fazer filmes por muitas décadas, ele nunca mais alcançou o reconhecimento e o sucesso que ele havia experimentado nos anos de 1920. Ele gastou muito do seu tempo modernizando seus antigos filmes mudos, produzindo versões sonoras para suas obras-primas anteriores, J'Accuse e Napoléon.