Abel Gance

Abel Gance (25 October 1889 – 10 November 1981) was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and the monumental Napoléon (1927). Born in Paris in 1889, Abel Gance was the illegitimate son of a prosperous doctor, Abel Flamant, and a working class mother, Françoise Péréthon (or Perthon). Initially taking his mother's name, he was brought up until the age of eight by his maternal grandparents in the coal mining town of Commentry in central France. He then returned to Paris to rejoin his mother who had by then married Adolphe Gance, a chauffeur and mechanic, whose name Abel then adopted. Although he later fabricated the history of a brilliant...