AllMovie

Abel Gance's remake of his own 1919 film of the same title marked something of a peak for interwar French cinema, along with Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), whose anti-war, pacifist sentiments it shares. The mix of stark realism in the World War I scenes, with its bitter depictions of trench warfare and the effect of four years of combat on all of those involved, soldiers and civilians alike, gives way to scenes of joy in the wake of the Armistice -- but the betrayal of the peace heralds the main section of the film, an astonishing mix of science-fiction and horror elements as we reach the real emotional core of the movie. Gance's story-telling technique had peaked in the silent era, but the more advanced technical means at his disposal in the 1930's only enhanced the range of his work. His 1938 J'accuse, in its reach and assembly of images and messages, seems to anticipate the future work of Stanley Kubrick, in Paths of Glory but also aspects of the symbolism 2001: A Space Odyssey (though this would more apply to Arthur C. Clarke's more explicitly pacifist novel, written contemporaneously with Kubrick's screenplay). The convergence of historical/literary reference -- the title is derived from Emile Zola's denunciation of the injustice behind the Dreyfuss affair -- and the cinema of the fantastic have combined, with the images and the message behind them, to make this one of the most startling films of its era, a reputation that it continues to deserve some seven and eight decades later.