Prisme
Paris, Gallimard, (February 28) 1930.
1 vol. (125 x 190 mm) of 382 and [6] and 1 f. In wrappers.
First edition. One of 109 first copies, réimposé, on vergé paper (no. XXXIX). Copy from the library of Pierre Tchernia, enriched with two modern prints from the film Napoléon, with annotations on the verso.
“Cinema owes you respect, Monsieur Gance, you were born before it.” This is how Pierre Tchernia welcomed Abel Gance on television, on the occasion of his last public appearance, in 1980.
In Prisme, his only published book, Abel Gance sets out his theory of cinema — an exceptional “prism” of the “music of light and of the world’s voices” — which aspires to “limp along with all of humanity,” and where the sincerity of the testimony arises from the synergy of special effects (for Gance’s films, like Méliès’s dreamlike sequences, contain “special effects”).
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