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Abel Gance Timeline

Abel Gance Timeline: 1889-1930

Born in Paris.  Gance is the illegitimate son of Abel Flamant a Jewish doctor, and Françoise Péréthon, a working class woman. [MORE] [ADD]

– Returns to Paris after being raised by his maternal grandparents in Commentry, central France. [MORE] [ADD]

– Leaves school. [MORE] [ADD]

– After working as a clerk in a solicitor’s office for a couple of years, he wins a contract at the Théâtre royal du Parc in Brussels.   It is here that he strikes up a friendship with actor Victor Francen and writer Blaise Cendrars. [MORE] [ADD]

Appears in his first film, Molière. [MORE] [ADD]

– Contracts tuberculosis and goes to Vittel to recover. [MORE] [ADD]

Joins the Altar Ego Company to direct four films in their small studio in Neuilly. [MORE] [ADD]

– Establishes Le Film Français production company with friends to produce films.  Their first effort is La Digue, in which Pierre Renoir makes his film debut. [MORE] [ADD]

Publishes his first film article, entitled “What is Cinema?   A Sixth Art Form!” in Cine-Journal. [MORE] [ADD]

– Marries Mathilde Thizeau. [MORE] [ADD]

– Writes La Victoire de Samothrace for Sarah Bernhardt, but the play is never staged. [MORE] [ADD]

Films Un Drame au chateau d’Acre in five days on a budget of 5,000 francs. [MORE] [ADD]

Signs with Films d’Arte to write and direct nine films a year. [MORE] [ADD]

– Is rejected by the French army on medical grounds. [MORE] [ADD]

– Film D’Arte refuses to release his La folie du Docteur Tube because of its bizarre visual effects. [MORE] [ADD]

– Following the completion of his Le droit a la vie, he signs a 10-picture deal with Louis Nalpas, head of Film d’Arte.   Gance will receive 1,500 francs for each film. [MORE] [ADD]

– Is drafted into the Service Cinématographique of the French army. [MORE] [ADD]

Starts filming J’Accuse for Pathe.   It is to be the first in a trilogy of films about war and peace.   Romuald Joube and Severin-Mars star. [MORE] [ADD]

Gance’s pacifist film J’Accuse is released in Paris to critical acclaim, but receives accusations of anti-militarism and defeatism. [MORE] [ADD]

– Charles Pathé underwrites Gance’s J’accuse when he leaves Film d’Arte because of lack of funds.   The film, which features battle footage Gance shot at the front, is a huge success both at home and overseas. [MORE] [ADD]

– Although devastated by the news that his traveling companion Ida Danis is dying from tuberculosis, Gance begins working on La Roue while recovering from a bout of Spanish flu in Nice. [MORE] [ADD]

– Meets D. W. Griffith while visiting America to promote J’accuse and subsequently re-edits La Roue in a more American style of film-making.  He also turns down the offer of a contract with MGM. [MORE] [ADD]

– Marries Marguerite Danis. [MORE] [ADD]

Refuses to make cuts to his latest film La Roue after the railway union complain that they are depicted in an unfavourable light. [MORE] [ADD]

The General Film Company is established to provide financial backing for Gance's Napoleon.   Filming was suspended on 21st June after the previous backers, the German group Stinnes, were declared bankrupt. [MORE] [ADD]

Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer buy the French, Belgian and Swiss rights to Napoleon. [MORE] [ADD]

Gance’s epic historical masterpiece Napoleon, featuring Albert Dieudonne in the title role, premieres at the Paris Opéra to rave reviews.   The film includes a sequence in Polyvision, in which three films are projected simultaneously to form either a panoramic shot or three separate images. [MORE] [ADD]

Files a complaint against Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn for screening a revised version of his epic Napoleon without his permission. [MORE] [ADD]

V. Ivanoff, the head of Ecran d’Art, announces that Gance will film an adaptation of Camille Flammarion’s The End of the World using the Gaumont-Petersen-Poulson sound process. [MORE] [ADD]