Gance’s direction is resolutely audacious, pertinently exploiting the fantastic dimension of the subject. Already the principal ideas and figures of style which he will subsequently perfect and which will bring him success are discernible. The truly infernal sequence of the panic of the terrified workers, fleeing the factory overwhelmed by a thick whitish smoke, and that showing the desperate race to stop the gas layer are very impressive (these images prefigure those of the frantic terror of the living in face of the procession of the dead in the two versions of J’accuse, and that of the panic of the crowd at the announcement of the coming destruction of the Earth which Gance was to film in 1929 in the old streets of Montmartre for La fin du monde). The cinéaste’s formal mastery is complete: realist décors, great variation in the scale of the shots, unexpected framings, use of cross-cutting to keep the spectator in suspense. Once again, his care for detail leads Gance to have his characters wear protective masks which resemble the respiratory swabs used by the soldiers, and which were reproduced in the illustrated press and the newsreels of the time. This film, an astonishing direct expression of the terrible repercussions of modern war, was released in September 1916, at a time when the French in their turn were using suffocating devices at the front, when the escalation of chemical hostilities was just beginning, and when the allied military authorities abruptly decided to censor all information on this subject.

Laurent Véray, “Abel Gance, cinéaste à l’oeuvre cicatricielle,” 1895, no. 31, October 2000