It's amazing this downer of a movie is not more depressing, but I think this is largely due to the fact that it never plays the sorrows of its characters for simple pathos. I can't think of many other early silent films that were this far ahead of their time (though Birth of a Nation and Nosferatu come to mind): not only is Gance's use of setting unequivocally brilliant, his editing is the missing link between the work of Griffith and the Russian masters like Eisenstein and Pudovkin.