With LA ROUE, film pioneer Abel Gance (1889-1981) created a four-part family saga that reworks motifs from the classic Oedipus myth and tells them as a modern tragedy. LA ROUE has gone down in film history not least because of its spectacular railway shots and montages, which inspired the entire film avant-garde of the silent era. The ingenious camera work and the virtuoso changes of setting make the 1923 film a visionary work of art. The new version was produced by the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, which restored the film in collaboration with the Cinémathèque française and Cinémathèque suisse on the basis of the original negative and Abel Gance’s screenplay. The work took place at L’Immagine Ritrovata’s copying plant in Bologna under the direction of François Ede. The music reconstruction was directed by the Mainz composer Bernd Thewes. His source material was a four-page handwritten list of over 100 music titles that Paul Fosse compiled with Arthur Honegger from works of his time: a high-calibre selection of symphonic music by 56 predominantly French composers of Impressionism and Symbolism.