VeteranLight
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Catangro
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of 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.
didi-5
This film by Abel Gance was lost for many years but has now been restored from a number of sources and made available for viewing by the Nederlands Museum. Gance's later silent spectacular Napoleon is rightly revered for its innovation and inventiveness - but is the same true of his war epic, J'accuse? In three parts, this film is first a conventional love triangle between the tiresome and bullied Edith, her drunken husband Francois, and dreaming poet Jean. But when the great war strikes, it will affect them all in ways they can't imagine.With some great images, especially in parts one and two, and for the most part, restrained acting, J'accuse is a powerful plea against the waste of war. For a film made ninety years ago, it has a modern feel with numerous close-ups, overlays, and other camera tricks. Although a bit ponderous in places it does not flag and is still extremely watchable, and relevant in a world where war has not yet become a thing of the past.J'accuse deserves to be regarded highly, and shows Gance to have been a skilled and ahead-of-time filmmaker in the silent era.
peterportez-1
I wish that we could read a comment from at least one of the 91 persons who gave a "1" rating to this silent film masterpiece. What were these 91 thinking? Do they hate all silents? Did they object to the length? If "J'Accuse!" is a "1," why did they suffer through its almost three-hour duration? If they gave up watching after 10 minutes, why bother to vote and muck up the weighted average, now standing at an absurd 6.4? Thank you, Turner Classic Movies, for making "J'Accuse" available to a wide audience. That network is most capably helping fill the void left by the shutting down of most of America's repertory film theaters.
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.
