Sam Rasnake's Blog: words of the 10,000 things - Posts Tagged "la-roue"
Seeing thoughts... Abel Gance and La Roue
I’m not certain why I connect with film as a medium. Ideas are realized more directly in film than in writing or music. For example, in 1923 Abel Gance – a French director, noted for his revolutionary approach to film – framing, quick cuts, simultaneous angles – directed La Roue (The Wheel). In the film, a strange love story with multiple layers, a young violin maker, after a fight, falls to his death from a mountain, but before he falls, Gance fills the screen with quick cuts – dozens of visuals in the seconds before he falls.
The audience is physically able to see the man’s final thoughts in a way that is much closer to real time. This wouldn’t be possible in such a direct manner in literature, music, painting or photography. Those mediums could show a person’s final thoughts – but never approaching real time. The pace or presence of the thoughts in the other art forms would be slow or still – producing a more deliberate or measured view. More simmer than boil.
Film – in the hands of a great filmmaker like Gance – can move us in a very direct, yet layered way. Emotions, thoughts, visuals, sound, epiphany, symbols... all working in unison to tell a story. Maybe another way to consider this is that film doesn’t tell a story as much as it reveals a story – layer by layer. Gance’s full arsenal of visuals and storytelling are most clearly realized in his masterpiece – Napoleon (1927).
The audience is physically able to see the man’s final thoughts in a way that is much closer to real time. This wouldn’t be possible in such a direct manner in literature, music, painting or photography. Those mediums could show a person’s final thoughts – but never approaching real time. The pace or presence of the thoughts in the other art forms would be slow or still – producing a more deliberate or measured view. More simmer than boil.
Film – in the hands of a great filmmaker like Gance – can move us in a very direct, yet layered way. Emotions, thoughts, visuals, sound, epiphany, symbols... all working in unison to tell a story. Maybe another way to consider this is that film doesn’t tell a story as much as it reveals a story – layer by layer. Gance’s full arsenal of visuals and storytelling are most clearly realized in his masterpiece – Napoleon (1927).
