Review of I Accuse

This is a rarity -- a genuine anti-war film that is also a genuine work of art. Gance's protagonist is the only member of his battalion to survive the trenches of WWI. The experience so horrifies him that he is driven to develop technology he hopes will prevent all future war. On learning, in 1938, that his native France is again preparing to send its young to the slaughter, he summons his outrage and grief for all his fallen comrades and calls on the war dead of 1914-1918-- from France, Italy, Britain and Germany -- to rise from their graves in rebellion against the horror. Sounds naff? Watch it, and think again. Any filmmaker or lover of cinematic art who reviles the current state of the world could learn from this film ... technically as well as thematically. Gance includes graphic and enlightening footage of the armies of France preparing for the second imperialist onslaught. That alone serves as a refreshing visual antidote to the decades of mind numbing propaganda that would have us believe there would never have been a WWII had Germany not existed.