Les « Marseillaises » d’Abel Gance

From 1927 to 1982 several versions of Gance’s Napoléon, some of which were silent, were created. The director thus illustrates one of Edgar Quinet’s favourite themes, that of the passage from an ebullient and noisy epic to the muffled world of the Empire. From Griffith to Gance and Sacha Guitry, each great director invented his own way of presenting heroes on the screen. The famous sequence of the Marseillaise ties up with the revolutionary moment and echoes the spectacular stagings of Romain Rolland’s plays in the thirties.