Visual Poems in Gance's J'accuse

Watching films like this one truly feels as if sound really did take something away from the cinema. Out of the endless technical and visual feats accomplished in the film, Gance's visual poems still seem like quite a bold, brilliant and purely cinematic choice. When the main protagonist and poet Jean Diaz (Romuald Joubé) is about to tell one of his poems to his mother, a cut that is expected to lead to an intertitle of the actual poem actually leads to a series of beautifully composed shots that evoke a poem. A visual equivalent to written poetry. By doing this Gance is equating the cinema (an art that, especially in 1919, no one took seriously, it wasn't even really considered an art back then) with poetry (perhaps the most esteemed of the arts).

Jean begins to recite Ode to the Sun to this mother:

followed by:

There's a few of these throughout the film. Completely stunning. Watched this in anticipation of Napoleon on April 1.