Abel Gance’s anti-war epic J’ACCUSE (1919) presented by Silents, Please! STL

This film is presented by Silents, Please! STL and will feature a special introduction from SPSTL’s Kate Stewart.

“One of the most terrible indictments against war which it is possible to imagine” -Kinematograph Weekly

Five months after the armistice was signed that ended World War I, Abel Gance premiered his epic J’ACCUSE in Paris. Many of his Gance’s friends had been killed in the trenches, and, as the director later explained, “J’ACCUSE for me was not just a film…I had a feeling of frenzy to use this new medium, the cinema, to show the world the stupidity of war.” And show it he did, with the vibrant style and epic scope that defines the work of this brilliant early-film auteur. The main story is a love triangle between Jean, a pacifist poet, who’s in love with Edith, who is in turn unhappily married to François, a brutish provincial farmer. When war is declared, both men join the army, serving in the same frontline regiment. Battling the Germans together, Jean and François reach an uneasy truce , but back at home, Edith is put in harm’s way due to her husband’s jealous suspicions. The film was incorporates real battle footage, as well as actual letters sent home by two of Gance’s friends who died in the war. J’ACCUSE’s celebrated “Return of the Dead” sequence was filmed using 2,000 soldiers on leave. The film remains a blistering indictment of war that sadly resonates to this day.

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