To hear Jean Cocteau tell it, Abel Gance's La Roue was a gauntlet toss in the form of a movie. In his estimation, cinema was never the same after the film's release in 1923. It would be easy for us to brush that thinking aside considering how many groundbreaking films have seen release in the 85 years since La Roue was in French theaters, but to read up on the history of the film, the context for Cocteau's rhetoric becomes more clear.

According to the thoroughly researched booklet that accompanies this DVD release, the original running time of the film was seven and a half hours to be watched over three successive evenings. Considering how immersive and exhausting the four and a half hour version compiled for this disc is, I can't imagine anyone coming away from Gance's full vision thinking of the director as anything less than a genius (or a monomaniac).

The sheer length of the film doesn't designate it as a classic, however. What exalts La Roue is the epic tone of its story and the brilliant technical innovations that Roue and his cinematographer Leonce-Henry Burel concocted to tell it.

The main player in this tale is a widowed train conductor named Sisif (played with furrowed agony by Severin-Mars) In the midst of a tragic derailing, Sisif happens upon a little girl, Norma (Ivy Close), who has been orphaned by the accident and decides to raise her as his own, alongside his son Elie (Gabriel de Gravone). As the years progress, both Sisif and Elie start to struggle with discomforting feelings of love for her, feelings that tears the family apart, and forces Norma into the arms of a exploitative businessman.

That boilerplate paragraph really only scratches the surface of this dense, multi-tiered story that spans decades in the lives of the main characters. Gance treats the tale like a Greek tragedy or a Biblical epic, weaving in philosophical questions about man as well as healthy smattering of Freudian psychology (it was no mistake that Gance set the film primarily at a train yard).

It is hardly an intimate story but it is one that is imbued with a sense of realism, thanks to the pains that Gance and his crew went through to shoot on location, build elaborate sets and to use a number of editing and camera tricks to capture the inner feelings and turmoil of each character. Watching the furious montage of the train wreck, as remembered by Sisif, is breathtaking, and although our modern eyes have seen the use of superimposition on screen before, it is used to fascinating effect throughout the film.

It is filmmaking of the highest order and is a welcome addition to the exponentially growing catalog of DVD releases in the U.S. And I will side with Cocteau when I say that I know that my viewing of films will no longer be the same now that I have finally seen La Roue.