J'accuse (1919) watch online HD

The only attempt to make a peace film during the war was in France, by the great Abel Gance...

'J'accuse' is almost as large in scope as 'Intolerance'. The director said that: 'It was intended to show that if war did not serve some purpose, then it was a terrible waste. If it had to be waged, then a man's death must achieve something.'

"J'accuse" is a triangle story of Edith (Marise Dauvray), her husband François Laurin (Severin-Mars) and Jean Diaz (Romould Joube), a poet who is in love with Edith... The three, however, are puppets in the hands of war...

Edith is taken captive and returns with a child... François and Jean... Well you have to see the film!

All this now seems excessively melodramatic and not entirely impartial, but visually "J'accuse" is an extremely powerful film and it certainly had an impact on contemporary audiences...

The film was remade by Abel Gance in 1937 in an attempt to warn against the impending World War II...

I wish that we could read a comment from at least one of the 91 persons who gave a "1" rating to this silent film masterpiece. What were these 91 thinking? Do they hate all silents? Did they object to the length? If "J'Accuse!" is a "1," why did they suffer through its almost three-hour duration? If they gave up watching after 10 minutes, why bother to vote and muck up the weighted average, now standing at an absurd 6.4? Thank you, Turner Classic Movies, for making "J'Accuse" available to a wide audience. That network is most capably helping fill the void left by the shutting down of most of America's repertory film theaters.

With this movie full of stunning imagery and stylish technique Abel Gance proved that he need take a back seat to no one when it came to mastery of the medium, in other words he forms a triumvirate with Sergei Eisenstein and David Wark Griffith, a triumvirate in which all are equal. The First World War was barely cold in its grave when Gance shot J'Accuse - a motif that recurs throughout from the visually stunning message spelled out by infantry at the outset to the child being taught to write it on a blackboard - yet remarkably what should now seem 'dated' is still potent - seventeen years later Irwin Shaw (who may or may not have seen or been aware of J'Accuse) utilised the concept of the dead protesting at the way in which their lives were squandered in his powerful One-Act play 'Bury The Dead' - and aspects of it were re-worked by others. Like most fine social documents it employs a 'normal' story - in this case our old friend the Eternal Triangle - as a way in to the exploration of political inadequacies and its message still resonates some 87 years later. A Masterpiece.

The print I saw required my full engagement; it was in poor shape, and the intertitles were in their original French (not my native language). I couldn't even clearly see the words of one. Fortunately, Abel Gance was a very visual filmmaker. And, I understood the gist of what was said. Originally, "J'accuse!" was some three hours, but the video I saw was about 107 minutes. I don't know if there's more footage out there, but I hope this film will be restored (and translated) someday and made more accessible. Its cinematic merits are clear, and the anti-war message is worthy of a larger audience.

The Great War ended the expansion of French cinema, ceasing the international market dominance of Pathé Frères. Now, avant-garde filmmakers like Abel Gance rose to prominence, which he did with this film. The narrative of "J'accuse!", in the way of Impressionism, is dictated by the characters' emotions and thoughts, and the juxtaposition of images becomes what has been called "psychological editing". The montages become rapid at times. One of my favorite shots, however, is a tracking long take of Jean on his homecoming. The camera follows him and turns back when he stops to see what he is looking at. There are also many symbolic images of death and religious iconography. The fantastic dénouement of the dead soldiers of war arising to accuse climactically binds the film's message and its impressionistic aesthetic.

The story involves a simple love triangle, but which is analogous to the war: the peaceful friendship the two men attain makes the point well. "J'accuse!" is the earliest of powerful anti-war films. It's images and message are not encumbered by too much Christian allegory or over-reaching sentimental appeals, such as with Griffith's "Hearts of the World" (1918) or Ince's "Civilization" (1916). Neither is it overly artistically obscure, and as the popular appreciation of Gance's "Napoléon" (1927) attests to, a large audience of film enthusiasts is out there who would treasure this forgotten monument.

(EDIT: Comments below added 4 November 2012)

My above comments from over seven years ago were based an abbreviated version that was available on VHS from the distributor Facets during the 1990s. Another IMDb member questioned the validity of these and others' reviews that were written before this film was restored and made available on Turner Classic Movies and the Flicker Alley DVDs. I'll take the opportunity to assure everyone that despite some of my reviews being on obscure films, I watched all of them shortly before writing my comments. Just ask me, and I'll inform of the exact source (usually DVD or VHS). Additionally, this IMDb member was incorrect in stating, "J'accuse" was "assumed lost until quite recently". There've always been incomplete prints available. What we have now is the most complete and crisp version since its initial release, which, as I expressed in my original comments, was what I longed for.

Having now seen "J'accuse" in excellent condition, I find the film ever more remarkable—a masterpiece of its time. Its cinematic Impressionism and pacifist message are clearer. There is some outstanding cinematography and editing here for 1919, including chiaroscuro effects, moving camera shots, nighttime scenes, picturesque scenery aside brutal depictions of war and its consequences and ominous images of dancing skeletons. There are iris frames and transitions, good use of fades, split screen and matte shots. In addition to Jean's homecoming, which I mentioned in my earlier comments, other outstanding scenes include those of life in the trenches and a fast-paced montage of the marching on a village. Yet, "J'accuse" isn't about featuring great battle scenes. The greatest scenes take place on the homefront and show the effects of war, including the darkly-lit deathbed sequence of the mother and the finale where the dead soldiers accuse the living, as well as the narrative of the allegorical love triangle that is sacrificed by war.

Enhanced by a good-quality print is the film's impressionistic emphasis on light. Beams of light symbolically shine into dark rooms. Scenes of sunrises and sunsets represent Jean's "Ode to the Sun". Superimposed images of Edith walk through Impressionist paintings. Poetry is also essential to Gance's message. The protagonist is a poet turned shell-shocked soldier, but the images and narrative are also poetically told. As Gance once said, "To get the public enthusiastic, you have to get the same feeling into your camera-work—poetry, exaltation… but above all, poetry."

The first thing to bear in mind is that there are actually two movies ,the 1919 silent film -and its watered-down editing of the twenties- and the 1937 talkie which is (and is not )a remake.

The silent version was filmed when the war was just over ,using real pictures of that slaughter.That was first intended as an anti -German manifesto -but only the rape scene with the big German shadow on the wall shows it-.This is the work of a pacifist ,Abel Gance,the French David Wark Griffith .The director is in the film:he is Jean Diaz -even if he does not play the part- the pacifist poet who writes an hymn to the sun (Gance already displays his love of poetry :later in a duel in "le capitaine fracasse" and in almost the whole "Cyrano and D'Artagnan" ,the actors declaim verses);Gance's depiction of a small village has the beauty of a pastoral:this quiet nature haunts him as the final pictures of "la fin du monde" (1930) bear witness.He bows to no one when it comes to direct movements in the crowd : the inhabitants of the village gathering around the decree of mobilization is a great moment.As is the "farewell scene" : Gance uses only hands on the picture and emotion reaches unbelievable peaks.

Two men are fighting in the trenches.They love the same woman ,one of them is her husband ,the other her lover (Jean Diaz).At times the movie might seem patriotic -which the remake was not at all- but Gance manages to show his disgust with war.The subtitles include moving real soldiers' letters to their family.His hero becomes mad and he thinks that soldiers should write lots of letters so that their wives would receive news long before they were dead.When he comes back to his village ,the film suddenly turns supernatural,and that's Gance's genius ,one of the most famous scenes in the French cinema,which will be even more impressive in the remake:here anger gives Gance the strength of ten.Let the Dead rise from their graves! War casualties' rise from the grave will haunt the viewer till his death."Your dead will come back,Diaz says,and they "ll ask you for an explanation! Shame on you ,unfaithful wives, war profiteers , politicians and president!A dance macabre, a skeletons' dance in a ring had already warned us.

The 1937 remake -by no means inferior to the silent work- had to be different:Hitler had come to power and as Jean Renoir said that very year ,"we are on the verge of a "grande illusion" .So Gance 's snatches of patriotism had disappeared and been replaced by strength born from despair .The 1937 "J'accuse" was a distraught plea for an universal peace ,and, in spite of its grandiloquence,it still stands today as one of the greatest pacifist works of all time.Besides ,the coming of sound allowed Gance to include ferocious lines (such as : "pretty soon ,there won't be enough wood to make crosses" ) A question I will always ask myself:I wrote it in my comment on "Austerlitz" :why was a convinced pacifist such as Gance so fascinated by a warrior like Napoleon (to whom he devoted two works)?

The 2006 restoration of this amazing 1919 film presents one of the very best opportunities to learn about the period from watching a contemporaneous film. Aesthetically, it stands on its own merit as a completely engaging and emotional piece, which on the whole deserves a much wider audience. The restoration drops whatever there was of a phony happy ending in the 1922 re-release, and adds an excellent score by Robert Israel. Israel scores are a quick tip that a silent film has been given a sensitive and elegant restoration that will be very palatable to modern tastes.

The story is a complex family/romantic melodrama built around a poet in love with a woman trapped in a bad marriage to a violent man. With the war, the two men become comrades in arms, and complications ensue. (I really dislike reviews that go on and on telling the film's story. If someone is going to watch the movie, it is up to the director to tell the story in his own style and at his own pace.) I believe the film is mischaracterized as an anti-war film. No one is really for war, so a realistic film like this by a veteran and using real footage will include a lot of pathos that will serve the purpose of an anti-war message. But everyone is anti-war, the difference between a pro-war and and an anti-war film is that a pro-war film blames the war on the enemy and creates situations for nobility based on service of the just cause. An anti-war film turns the proponents of war into greedy liars, emphasizes the humanity of the enemy, and creates situations for nobility based on refusal to participate in the war. So defined, this piece (like The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse - 1921) is a pro-war film.

J'Accuse! (1919)

*** (out of 4)

The French masters 166-minute epic tells the story of two soldiers, Francois (Severin-Mars) and Jean (Romuald Joube), both in love with the same woman but she is married to the much older Francois but has an affair with Jean. This is very impressive film from French director Gance but I think it falls short compared to his two classic epics that would follow this one. I think this films biggest problem is its running time, which seems a tad bit too long especially a few of the talking scenes, which run on and on. On the technical side this film is nearly flawless with Gance taking the influence of Griffith and really pushing it to a new level. The most impressive thing in the film are the amazing war scenes, which are downright brilliant and they really make you feel as if you are a part of the action. The scenes with the men in the trenches contain some great atmosphere and the sense of dread runs throughout these scenes. The most famous sequence in the film, and in film history, is the "March of the Dead" sequence, which takes nearly twenty-minutes and comes towards the end of the movie. This is certainly one of the most eerie and haunting sequences in film history and the main reason this anti-war film is still remembered today. The way Gance points the finger at the folks who weren't in the war and either living it up having fun or making money off the war, comes off very creepy and the message is certainly right there on the screen. The effects used to show the dead walking are very well done and the atmosphere here is so thick that you'll feel as if you can feel them walking towards you. The performances are all very good with Mars and Joube really sticking out. As I said, I think the film runs a tad bit too long but this is still a very impressive film with one of the greatest sequences in film history.

Before I start, I am a bit confused. If the newly restored version just debuted this year, how come there are reviews that predate this? Could it be that they saw an extremely abbreviated version? Could it also be that some have reviewed a movie they never actually saw (something that's happened with the first Marx Brothers film and many other lost films). All I know is that this movie was assumed lost until quite recently and you may want to keep this in mind--the reviews were based, at best, on an earlier and less complete version.

UPDATE: After talking it over with one of the earlier reviewers, I learned that there WERE other extremely truncated versions floating out there on VHS. I am glad this cleared up my confusion and thank goodness we now have the fully restored Flicker Alley version!

While writer/director Abel Gance made two films called J'ACCUSE, they are both very, very different even though they are about WWI. The 1938 version is much more watchable but dated stylistically for 1938 and the 1919 version is overlong and has a blurred message BUT it also was much more important historically speaking, as for 1919, it was an incredibly innovative film.

Unlike the 1938 version, a very significant portion of this film is set before WWI--perhaps too much, as it seemed unnecessary and tended to make the film a bit overlong (at nearly three hours). However, the battle scenes were very good and until THE BIG PARADE and ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, they were probably the best on film. Also, since it was made mostly in 1918, there is no post-war section to the film--the war had literally just ended. The 1938 film is MOSTLY set in the intervening years--including 1938.

The overall message is that war is bad and pointless, which is the same messages as the later film, but since it was mostly filmed DURING the war, there also seemed to be a much stronger anti-German bias. In other words, while war was seen as evil, so were the raping and murdering Germans. It's natural that in the midst of the war that it be portrayed that way, but it's a shame this anti-German bias was in this film and not the 1938 one (since, in WWII, the Germans were actually "the bad guy"--in WWI the German people and soldiers were victims just like everyone else). So the film suffers from the "blame it all on the Germans" myth.

As I mentioned above, there were multiple messages in the film. Another important plot in the film involves friendship and love--and in that sense it is a much more conventional story. Personally, I felt this aspect of the film was the least important.

Overall, a spectacular and seminal work--though one that isn't as spectacular today since better war and anti-war films have followed. The biggest problems are the stagy style, too much melodrama and its length--but when the film debuted in 1919, it was STILL much better and more watchable than most films coming out in Europe and America.

This film by Abel Gance was lost for many years but has now been restored from a number of sources and made available for viewing by the Nederlands Museum. Gance's later silent spectacular Napoleon is rightly revered for its innovation and inventiveness - but is the same true of his war epic, J'accuse?

In three parts, this film is first a conventional love triangle between the tiresome and bullied Edith, her drunken husband Francois, and dreaming poet Jean. But when the great war strikes, it will affect them all in ways they can't imagine.

With some great images, especially in parts one and two, and for the most part, restrained acting, J'accuse is a powerful plea against the waste of war. For a film made ninety years ago, it has a modern feel with numerous close-ups, overlays, and other camera tricks. Although a bit ponderous in places it does not flag and is still extremely watchable, and relevant in a world where war has not yet become a thing of the past.

J'accuse deserves to be regarded highly, and shows Gance to have been a skilled and ahead-of-time filmmaker in the silent era.

It's hard to describe the images you will see in this film. They cut to the very core of the most horrific results of war. It is a fantasy which will leave you with images that will not leave you.

Any mention of the particulars here might spoil the experience of this great silent offering.

Here's why I deem this the most important film of the first 20 years; DW Griffith also had a lofty message to impart in Intolerance, but his Victorian saga of humanism through the ages was removed from life, unfolding in the shadow of gigantic Hollywood sets for Babylon or in Judea at the time of Christ. It was comfortably nudged in its archaic pulpit. This is important to understand, by contrast. J'Accuse is not a historical epic on WWI. Gance was drafted in the French Army's Section Cinématographique, was discharged for ill-health, but appalled at the horror of the experience, decided to re-enlist and make a film about it. He filmed actual war booming away through the country, actual soldiers on leave from the front and expected back within days.

Oh, the bulk of the film away from the trenches is old-fashioned melodrama, likely to leave the modern viewer cold. What does hold power, is that it is about war inspiring Gance to make the film denouncing war.

See, our protagonist is an artist. Like Gance, he is a poet committed to pacifism and blessed with the gift of granting vision, look at the poem he recites to his elderly mother, rendered in silent images, the sun rising over heaving seas. This is a great moment, later repeated for contrast in the midst of muddy war.

So, the poet enlists in the army to save a girl he loves but is not his, not solely his at any rate, and is really the whole of France. This all preamble of course - a man who grants visions brought to where visions are possible, the mad theater of war. The most celebrated moment in the film is an actual vision, a poem he recites for an audience back home which has gathered to listen about life in the trenches.

It is the rousing sight of the dead rising from the battlefield.

Gance used for the scene 2000 soldiers who had come straight from Verdun and were due back eight days later. You have to appreciate the chilling significance of this. Gance was staging death for these people, and death that both parties could not have failed to know was a rehearsal for the real thing. Within weeks of their return, the majority of the soldiers were dead as presaged in the film.

So death staged for an audience gathered round back home, at the behest of this poet - now raving mad - who conjures a vision of cinematic phantoms, the dead gaunt and in clutches and tatters getting up from shallow graves to march all the way back and haunt the living. They Accuse! ungrateful parents, wives, brothers, who have not honored the sacrifice.

The maelstrom of self-reflexive notions was one of the most advanced things going on at the time, I was surprised really. Gance would go on to invent a new visual grammar with La Roue, and first inklings of that we see here in the rapid-fire cutting and agile camera in the battle scenes that reflect the anxious mobility tearing through Europe, that was really the fight for a modern world.

A truly underrated gem if ever there was one, J'Accuse, which comes from now renowned film-maker Abel Gance, is a striking, powerful and deeply moving wartime drama that packs punches, dances with the roses and howls at the moon all in the course of 160 minutes. Now known for works that came in the decade following the first World War, Gance establishes himself here in 1919 as a director willing to learn from his peers and do one better. Indeed, audiences at the time were more than firmly on his side. "Your name in England is, at present, more famous than Griffith's", an anecdote that rings true after watching J'Accuse in its most readily complete form available today thanks to the brilliant work in collaboration by Flicker Alley, Turner Classic Movies and Lobster Films in doing a terrific job restoring the film to its rightful, stylised beauty on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Set, produced and featuring actual footage shot on battlefields of World War I, Gance's seminal work here strives to do many things at once and while there are plenty who will argue he tries too much (or at least doesn't leave enough on the cutting room floor), I argue that with a few minor exceptions, J'Accuse is successful in its quest to marry poetry with war and terror with beauty, with a horizon that never seems to show itself. Sure, it's certainly guilty of being a bit overly-lofty at times. And yes, cutting back and forth between the film's two heavily-contrasted plots can be jarring, but I hardly think this was out of step with Gance's intentions. The film's theme essentially boils down to the blind getting in the way of each other and those lucky enough to have eyes thinking it best to ignore said unfortunates in order to get on with their own problems or indulgences in peace. By applying the juxtaposition of a serene, idyllic French countryside love-triangle against the harsh, cold grasp of war and death, the director sets up his idea, carries it forward and succeeds in bringing it to a very affecting close.

I would be amiss in failing to mention two other key players in J'Accuse's success however, and those are cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel and the Robert Israel Orchestra who were commissioned for the restoration's soundtrack. Burel takes Gance's direction and runs with it. The battlefields are gloomy and frightening, the French countryside bright and warm to the eyes. Furthermore, whether it was under Burel's direction or not is unclear but, the film's various intertitle designs and abstract live-action imagery (the most striking perhaps occurring early on when family members prepare to leave their loved ones) make a profound emotional impact and showcase tonal photography techniques and styles not even Griffith had dreamed up yet, much of which is still utilised today in movies favouring mood and atmosphere. Lastly, the Robert Israel Orchestra punctuate Burel's photography with melancholic sweeping piano keys and piercing, wounded strings to round out one of the finest and most striking examples of silent-era cinema at its best.

I don't watch silent films quite as often as I should, but this one reminds me I should try harder once more. Most praises I've read about (this one), go out to the third and final act, which is absolutely understandable, but I was very impressed with the hour and fifty minutes before that also. How the relationship between Jean and François changes was most impressively done, both by story and by acting (especially Séverin-Mars, who plays the latter, while Romuald Joubé deserves special credit for his part in act three, when he loses his mind).

This war- and love-story works on many levels. It deals with the horrors of war, but also how man (and woman and child) can overcome - though obviously not without scars. The part of the child that was conceived through rape is especially harrowing, but the love of Jean and Edith helps even the raging soldier François to gain understanding of true love - though the scene in which the child must play a German soldier with the French kids is again hard to watch.

The words 'J'accuse' return many times in the film, but who is really accused in the first part of the film? The war ministers in their safe retreats, one would say? When we witness one them being struck personally by a (war) tragedy, we must conclude no. The words 'I accuse' are more likely the perfectly logical way of expressing one's desire to blame someone - anyone - for all miseries that may come about in life; in war, ánd in love. When finally Jean looks out his window and blames the sun, this seems to substantiate that idea; it is an angry, desperate rant against a 'thing' which will burn no less when it is addressed. Of course I do not mean to dismiss here the part just before that, in which the returning dead army ghosts accuse their close ones of betrayal in various ways, but their accusations are instantly cathartic to all, and both the survivors and the dead may carry on. So, I'd like to doubt the reviews I've read about this film being anti-war, Abel Gance 'simply' seems to say that horrors of these kind had better be worth the while...? Just my two cents after this first viewing.

Then there is an owl (symbol of the night) who acts as the prophet of war, someone resembling 'Astérix le Gaulois' as a symbol of bravery on the side of the French soldiers, beautiful visualizations of a book of poems called 'Les pacifiques', and so on. I can't say I fully understood all of it, but I did enjoy pretty much all of it; who is then really bothered when someone looks into the camera now and then (accidentally, I presume) or when there seem to be some wrongly cut short bits here and there (again, accidentally, I presume)? And, perhaps strangely, but it worked somehow, there is room for some humour

Impressive, to say the least. A big 8 out of 10.

In connection with the showing at this German Count's private cinema of the film "Mater Dolorosa" (1917) by Herr Gance some months ago, this Teutonic aristocrat had praised and even eulogized the good film work of this important and essential French film director. "Mater Dolorosa", with its superb cinematographic technique, was a great definitive leap forward in Herr Gance's career.

"J'Accuse!" confirms aristocratic suspicions about Herr Gance's ability. Because it's without any doubt another great film in which those pioneer cinematographic techniques mentioned before are carried out. Again an excellent example of technical experimentation to achieve a film narrative, J'Accuse is superbly developed… achieving an unquestionable masterpiece.

"J'Accuse!", besides it's perfect technique, is an emotive antiwar message filmed during the I World War great disaster and with wounds still open. It's a film that denounces the absurdity of war, its uselessness and the terrible consequences that society suffers. It demands the viewer to take note of the great sacrifices and injustices of many broken lives that never will be the same through the fault of the war.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count when mentioning those old wars plenty of lost battles, is slightly Teutonic.

Last Saturday -- December 12, 2009 -- was the actual North American premier of this wonderful film in its entirety at the winter edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Nederlands Filmmuseum and Lobster Films' fine efforts have resulted in a restoration of the European release print as Abel Gance intended for the movie to be seen; indeed, as it was seen in France and Britian in 1919. They combined six different prints including one original camera negative and one print with original tinting to produce a truly stunning cinematic triumph. I, as many of you have, had seen the version edited for American release, but this print simply took my breath. It is rich and full. The additional material fully advances the narrative. Gance's strident message of the uselessness and futility of war comes to full flower and is even more disturbing than was evident from earlier,incomplete releases. The expanded performances of Severin-Mars, Marise Dauvray, and Romuald Joube fill in the previous gaps in the story. Young and pretty Angele Guys is all the more angelic in this version which includes the heartbreaking taunting she receives at the hands of playmates when they discover she is the bastard product of a German soldiers' gang rape. Gance's use of quick-cutting and montage presages that of Eisenstein and with this release it is even more apparent that Gance was certainly one of the handful of early pioneering geniuses of the cinema. All in all this restoration is truly wonderful. If you don't have the recently released DVD in your library, you do not have a complete collection of the greatest silent films. As I've written before on these pages, if you've never attended the San Francisco Silent Film Festival you are -- as our teachers used to say --only cheating yourself! It is very well run and held in the Castro Theater, a beautifully preserved movie palace. The Festival is indeed one of the premier film events in the world.