Gance's early chronicle of the First World War is among the most
technically advanced films of the 'teens, displaying a breathtaking
rapidity of montage and fluidity of camerawork matched at the time only
by DW Griffith. The story itself is grandiose sentimentality, and the
famous culminating sequence - the return of the dead - an extraordinary
but obvious set piece. Nonetheless, this is a visually astonishing
film. Often the quality of the lighting is especially subtle
(cameraman LH Burel later worked for Bresson), and the film's epic
style is tempered by an unexpected delicacy and subtlety.
