Pioneering French film director (1889-1981) best known for the silent classics J'Accuse and the six-hour historical epic Napoléon. AMS in French, signed "A. Gance," one page, 7.5 x 9.75, August 29, 1908. Handwritten four-stanza poem entitled, "Death for Life to Rimbaud," referring to French avant-garde poet, Arthur Rimbaud, (1854-91). The first stanza reads (translated): "In the musky and singeing air thick with strange shrillness, / The drum dully hammers at enthusiasm / Bullets, shells rain down, living sarcasm / That spares the wounded that pain devours. / The battle twists on the folds in the hills / And spits black blood on the broken guns / While, witness to the heavens of blood gold set glow / High up, floating in the crimson clamor, the crow!" He writes a quotation in Latin following the signature, "To live, shed the reason for living." The Latin quote is translated into French below in another hand, and given the citation, "Juvenal, Satire VIII.". In fine condition, with two areas of paper loss to the left edge.
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