Lucrezia Borgia

REVIEW
Along with the short films "Au Secours!" and "La Folie du Docteur Tube," this is a fascinating, rarely seen work by silent film pioneer Gance. The shorts veer towards the experimental, with avant garde tendencies that are more aggressive than Gance used in his features. Lucrezia Borgia is an opulent portrait of one of history's most ambitious families. Pity the girl; historians now agree that the tales of vice and corruption levied against Lucrezia were greatly exaggerated. Gance paints her more to be pitied than scorned, made victim by a father renowned as the deliciously corrupt Pope Alexander VI. When your film is narrated Niccolo Machiavelli, reveling at each melodramatic turn, it is difficult to miss.