The life of Abel Gance, one of the great innovators of early cinema, came to an end this week in 1981. Gance, born in Paris in 1889, established himself as a groundbreaking director in the 1910s who was supposedly one of the first to employ close-ups and dolly shots, and also made waves with his use of newsreel footage and fast editing in the fictional anti-war movie J’Accuse (1919). However Gance is most remembered for his epic Napoleon (1927): it was shot in an expanded aspect ratio and then shown with three separate projectors and a curved widescreen that resulted in an almost three-dimensional panoramic effect. Though a huge success in Europe, the film was significantly cut and shown on only one projector by MGM on its U.S. release, and the its resulting failure contributed to the decline of Gance’s career. Film historian Kevin Brownlow, however, spent years reassembling Gance’s original version of the movie and screened it to a rapturous reception in 1980. Francis Ford Coppola organized a run at New York’s Radio City Hall, with a new score by his father Carmine Coppola, which resulted in Gance and his film finally receiving adequate recognition. Just a few months afterwards, Gance passed away.