The film has all the hallmarks of a great big bore (even in this heavily cut version, the first hair does seem pretty interminable); and yet the personality of its creator is there all the time, mixing dross with gold as he has always done.

Silent-cinema genius he may well have been, but by this time in his career Abel Gance was creatively a shadow of his former self.

If the name of Abel Gance isn't reason enough to rent the film, then how about a cast that includes Orson Welles, Claudia Cardinale, Michel Simon, Vittorio De Sica, Jean Marais, Jack Palance, and Leslie Caron?

This lengthy, academic and stilted pageant is made watchable only by familiar faces in the cast.