La Folie du docteur Tube | |
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Directed by | Abel Gance |
Written by | Abel Gance |
Produced by | Louis Nalpas |
Starring | Séverin-Mars Albert Dieudonné |
Cinematography | Léonce-Henri Burel |
Release date |
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Running time | 10 minutes |
Country | France |
Languages | Silent French intertitles |
La Folie du docteur Tube is a 1915 short silent experimental film directed by Abel Gance, in which a scientist takes a white, cocaine-like powder which makes him hallucinate. Gance shows the man's hallucinations by using a series of distorting mirrors and ordinary lenses, because no distoring lenses were available at this moment in timedistorting lenses on the camera. [1] A copy of the film is preserved at the Cinémathèque française and has been digitised. [2]
A famous and whimsical Doctor Tube invents a powder that makes people deformed. He first tries the experiment on a dog, then on his assistant, a black child, and on himself. The result amuses them a lot. He then sprays some powder on two lovely young girls who visit him, who are devastated by the result, as well as their fiancés who receive the same treatment. The bodies are so deformed that they become unrecognizable. The four young people come to blows with the professor, who then tells them that all they need to do is get rid of the dust that covers their clothes to regain a normal shape. Everything goes back to normal and the adventure ends around a table and a bottle of champagne.
Abel Gance, about The Madness of Doctor Tube: "[...] I got drunk too quickly and said: 'I'm going to impress them all at the cinema because I have a very powerful idea.' I had the idea of writing The Madness of Doctor Tube. It was a story with the decomposition of light rays, which makes things no longer seen at all from the angle from which we see them. I used distorting mirrors, I did everything that I technically imagined the audience would appreciate immensely because it had never been done, and when I showed this film to the director and the people who interested in me, they said to themselves: 'He's crazy, we mustn't entrust him with a penny anymore, he's going to ruin us.'" [3]
Napoléon is a 1927 French silent epic historical film, produced, and directed by Abel Gance that tells the story of Napoleon's early years. It is also the only film to use Polyvision. On screen, the title is Napoléon vu par Abel Gance, meaning "Napoleon as seen by Abel Gance". The film is recognised as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects. A revival of Napoléon in the mid-1950s influenced the filmmakers of the French New Wave. The film used the Keller-Dorian cinematography for its color sequences.
Abel Gance was a French film director, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and Napoléon (1927).
The Cinémathèque française, founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers daily screenings of films from around the world.
Pierre Fresnay was a French stage and film actor.
Albert Dieudonné was a French actor, screenwriter, film director and novelist.
He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not is a 2002 French psychological drama film directed by Laetitia Colombani. The film focuses on a fine arts student, played by Audrey Tautou, and a married cardiologist, played by Samuel Le Bihan, with whom she is dangerously obsessed. The film studies the condition of erotomania and is both an example of the nonlinear and "unreliable narrator" forms of storytelling.
La Folie du doute is a 1923 French silent film written and directed by René Leprince. The film was shot in 1920.
J'accuse is a 1919 French silent film directed by Abel Gance. It juxtaposes a romantic drama with the background of the horrors of World War I, and it is sometimes described as a pacifist or anti-war film. Work on the film began in 1918, and some scenes were filmed on real battlefields. The film's powerful depiction of wartime suffering, particularly its climactic sequence of the "return of the dead", made it an international success and confirmed Gance as one of the most important directors in Europe.
End of the World is a 1931 French science fiction film directed by Abel Gance based on the novel Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion. The film stars Victor Francen as Martial Novalic, Colette Darfeuil as Genevieve de Murcie, Abel Gance as Jean Novalic, and Jeanne Brindau as Madame Novalic.
Faces of Children is a 1925 French-Swiss silent film directed by Jacques Feyder. It tells the story of a young boy whose mother has died and the resentments which develop when his father remarries. It was a notable example of film realism in the silent era, and its psychological drama was integrated with the natural landscapes of Switzerland where much of the film was made on location.
El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a "cinematic melodrama". It achieved considerable success on its release, as a ground-breaking film that was distinctively French at a time when the cinema was felt to be dominated by American productions.
Folie or Folies may refer to:
Vénus aveugle is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation.
Jean Tulard is a French academic and historian. Considered one of the best specialists of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic era, he is nicknamed by his peers "the master of Napoleonic studies".
Annie Ducaux was a French actress, who appeared in 40 film and television productions between 1932 and 1980. Ducaux was a shareholder in the state theater Comédie-Française from 1948, and played in numerous stage productions there. She is possibly best-remembered for her roles in such films as Abel Gance's Beethoven's Great Love (1937), Conflict and Les grandes familles.
Léonce-Henri Burel was a French cinematographer whose career extended from the silent era until the early 1970s. He was the director of photography on more than 120 films, working almost exclusively in black-and-white.
Roger Karl was a French actor. Karl was born Roger Trouvé in Bourges.
L'Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou la Cornue infernale, released in the United States as The Mysterious Retort and in Britain as The Alchemist and the Demon, is a 1906 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 874–876 in its catalogues.
Safety Catch is a 1970 French thriller film directed by Yves Boisset and starring Bruno Cremer. The film is based on the novel A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbanenco.
Le Brasier ardent is a 1923 French film directed by Ivan Mosjoukine. It combines elements of comedy, mystery, romance and psychological drama. The title has been variously translated into English as The Blazing Inferno, The Burning Crucible, The Burning Brazier, The Burning Cauldron, and Burning Embers.