An ad for “I Accuse” in Exhibitors Herald, Nov. 5, 1921.

The “war to end all wars” ended November 11, 1918, at 11 am. After four years of butchery, gas attacks, hand-to-hand combat and trench warfare, soldiers walked away from their hellholes stunned by the conflagrations they had seen. Ambitious leaders seeking increased power amid growing nationalism, military rivalry and pure hatred inflicted gross bloodshed on their weary citizens. Many people around the world found the conflict a barbarous mess, a vast killing fields rendering munitions makers multimillionaires and ordinary men just cannon fodder. Many cried out for disarmament and the end to war.

One such patriot was renowned French director Abel Gance. Rejected from serving at the front due to lingering effects from tuberculosis, the young man served as stretcher bearer, carrying gravely injured men from the front. He abhorred the destructive war, writing in 1916: “How I wish all that those killed in the war would rise up one night and return to their countries, their homes, to see if their sacrifice was worth anything at all. The war would stop of its own accord, horrified by its own awfulness.” Turning his outrage and anguish into poetry and passion, Gance created the moving film “J’Accuse” in 1919, a powerful cry for universal disarmament and an indictment against victory at any cost.

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