J'accuse (1919): trivia & fun facts

Fun facts

• Pathé initially had no success in selling the film for distribution in the United States, where its references to pacifism were unfavourably regarded, and in 1921, Gance went to America hoping to launch it himself.
• The sequence of the "return of the dead" at the end of the film was shot in the south of France by using 2000 soldiers who had come back on leave.
• Abel Gance had been drafted into the French Army's Section Cinématographique during World War I, but he was later discharged because of ill health, a piece of good fortune to which he later said he owed his life.
• Influenced by the constant news of the deaths of friends at the front, and also by the recently published book Le Feu by Henri Barbusse, he succeeded in persuading Charles Pathé to finance the film.
• To film the battle scenes, Gance asked to return to the front and was re-enlisted into the Section Cinématographique, with the result that he found himself in September 1918 filming in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel alongside the United States Army.
• Work on the film began in 1918, and some scenes were filmed on real battlefields.
• When J'accuse was first shown in France in April 1919, it was a great success with the public, whose mood in the aftermath of the war it seemed to capture.

Source: Wikipedia

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