Locomotive engineer Sisif saves infant girl Norma from a train wreck and raises her as his daughter. Norma thinks Sisif’s son Elie is her brother. When the two fall in love, she leaves to marry a virtual stranger. At the same time, Sisif is also in love with her, leading to a complex love triangle.

Though most famous for Napoleon, Abel Gance would have more than a career’s worth of ambition and innovation even without that monumental biopic. Only recently rediscovered and restored, The Wheel is one of cinema’s great early achievements, an epic unprecedented in its emotional complexity.