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"Le premier grand spectacle du Cinéma parlant Français," tasked with nothing less than saving the planet. The one understated joke describes a protagonist equipped with "the gift of sacrifice," and who is there to wear the crown of thorns but Abel Gance himself? (The camera opens on a gum-chewing centurion before pulling back to reveal the Passion play in a cathedral, Bach chorales and all.) His Mary Magdalene (Colette Darfeuil) is coveted by the war-profiteering skunk (Samson Fainsilber), a Nobel Prize is cold comfort for the astronomer brother (Victor Francen) disillusioned with the state of things. The poet's purpose is to suffer, "he hopes to renew humanity, he can't even pay his rent," the answer from above is a colossal comet hurtling toward Earth. Waves break and lava flows, the stock market spirals and heads of state shudder. "Ce qui nous reste a vivre?" Gance's apocalypse, arbitrarily shaved by producers into a mishmash of leaden early-talkie tableaux and overheated spasms of silent-film syntax. Hysteria builds into a fever of distorting lenses, as befits the visionary who directs and acts in a daze. "And all those who hate each other, who want to kill each other... They will all huddle together like a giant flock of sheep, and we will be the shepherds." DeMille is nearby, a Capra gag (international journos side by side at the switchboard) is workshopped along the way. Up and down the Eiffel Tower, cf. Crichton's The Lavender Hill Mob, a writhing orgy in defiance of the encroaching ball of fire. (The group-grope builds up quite a head of steam until killjoy monks crash the event.) The coda reappears in When Worlds Collide and The War of the Worlds, the enforced utopia of "une republique universelle" is soon seized by a different kind of megalomaniac. With Sylvie Gance, Jeanne Brindeau, Georges Colin, and Jean d'Yd. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |