Summary
In the dying days of the French Revolution, a Corsican general comes to great prominence.
Over the following years, Napoléon Bonaparte would win France many great military
victories, transforming a divided nation into a great empire...
Review
One of the most ambitious films in cinema history, Abel Gance’s epic six-hour long Napoléon
is both a stunningly visual work of cinema and a poetically beautiful telling of the life
of France’s most famous general.
The film was originally to have been made as a six-part series about the full life of
Napoléon. In the end, it became a single epic film which covered only part
of Napoléon’s life (up to the invasion of Italy).
With scant regard to the commercial imperative (which runined his financial backers),
Gance immerses himself fully in his artistic achievement, perfecting new techniques of
film-making that are breathtaking in their originality. For example, he introduces
colour tinting, use of split screen, triptych photography (shooting a scene three times
and combining to form a single image), and wide-screen expansion. The latter required
specialist projection equipment which few cinemas had. That, and the sheer length
of the film, resulted in the film being a commercial failure.
The film was restored and released a number of times, most successfully in the 1990s by
Kevin Brownlow, with music by Carl Davis, running to 5 hours. There is also a 4
hour version by Francis Ford Coppola with music by his father Carmine.
Today, as a result of these restorations, Abel Gance’s Napoléon is regarded as
the definitive film of the life of Napoléon and one of the unrivalled masterpieces
of early French cinema.
© James Travers 2003
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