Film as a formal medium has existed now since the 1890s; war movies have been around about that long. Think back — how many World War II movies were made during that war? How about Vietnam? Or the Iraq War? Hollywood — and its counterparts around the world — have made movies commenting on ongoing conflicts for decades. But the Great War happened when modern film as we understand it now was still in its relative infancy, transitioning in fits and starts from its roots as a novelty technology into a full-fledged art form; most surviving films about the Great War were all produced after the fact. But what about a movie made during the war? There are a few out there, most of them American-made (Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith both have entries into this small canon) but if it's gritty authenticism you're after, don't worry, France's most famous propagandist has got you covered with J'Accuse, a truly brutal indictment of war, partially filmed in the closing months of World War One.
Gance in his youth was at the forefront of new film techniques, and J'Accuse! is consequently a rather eclectic film, using a mix of at-the-time advanced filmmaking techniques like rapid cuts, but also art pieces, poetry, documentary-style quotations from anonymous soldiers, and even real war footage: formerly part of the French army's film division, Gance re-enlisted just for the sake of being able to get footage for the battle scenes. Talk about suffering for art.
The bulk of the story is a rather mawkish romantic drama centering around the tumultuous relationships between a young woman, Edith, her abusive husband Francois, and her artistic lover Jean, and how the war affects them all. It's long and meandering, though beautifully shot. The real draw of the film, however, is the climactic third act. It's now 1918, and Jean, so shell-shocked he's gone insane, returns home from the war telling of a vision he had where the dead rose from the battlefield and begun marching home. It sounds nuts, of course, and everyone just dismisses him, but you know how it is: everyone gangsta until the war dead show up at their door. It's the kind of shocker scene that only a silent film could dream up, a prototypical zombie movie where instead of eating brains, they simply want to see if their sacrifices have been worth it. (For the most part, they haven't — Gance was a propagandist, and this film was a rebuke towards a France that he felt was insufficiently patriotic or appreciative of the military sacrifice.) The film leans heavy on symbolic elements like this; Gance has clearly captured the dour mood of Europe in the aftermath of the war, and darkly powerful images like a battlefield full of gravemarkers do all the talking for this silent film.
As with most silent films of the era, there's no real complete version of the film; the Lobster Film Studios restoration is perhaps the most definitive version available, with a brand new score by Robert Israel. Unfortunately, even this version is not easy to find.
At nearly three hours long this can feel like a slog — it lacks the stellar pacing of Gance's later biopic of Napoleon, which hardly at all feels five-plus hours long — but stunning imagery and a quality performance by the cast help make up for it. While the film is certainly not subtly nationalist for all its anti-war message, it's hard to argue with its stark, almost nihilistic symbolism.
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