La Roue

Sisif, a railwayman, saves a small girl named Norma orphaned in a train crash and raises her as his own alongside his son Elie. As she grows up, so does the question inside him: whether to tell her the truth, and what telling it would cost. Abel Gance builds this melodrama out of rails, steam, coal and turning wheels. Its place in film history comes less from the story than from the cutting. Gance pushed rapid montage down to the single frame here, one shot lasting one frame. The technique was studied by the Soviet montage school and fed directly into the avant-garde of the period. The question of length is a story in itself. The original ran to 32 reels, roughly seven and a half to nine hours, and screened as a weekly serial. Gance cut it to about two and a half hours for general distribution in 1924, and a great deal of material was lost. The 2008 restoration runs 263 minutes and the 2020 restoration 414 minutes, the latter regarded as closest to the original. Who it's for: Anyone curious about silent cinema's formal revolutions and the history of editing. Who it's not for: The melodrama is heavy and overwrought and the length is punishing. Anyone planning a single sitting should know which version they are starting.