Classical music and cinema Un grand amour de Beethoven (1936) and Louise (1938) by Abel Gance

In the 1930s Abel Gance attempted the synthesis of music and cinema with the biopic Un grand amour de Beethoven (1936) and an adaptation of Gustave Charpentier’s 1900 opera Louise (1938). This chapter explores the ways in which Gance tries to avoid Beethoven’s music becoming mere illustration of a sentimental narrative, and how he attempts to integrate the musical numbers in Louise so that a narrative can emerge from a series of high musical moments that arrest the action.