Posted on 12/13/2023 2:59:32 PM PST by Fiji Hill
Scott should have directed a dramatic miniseries with relative unknowns.
Or selected a chapter in his life where both are protaganists in their rise to power.
As it is, it’s a sprawling and aimless movie. Everyone in that movie has made or been in far better ones. Scott made The Duelists, so you know he can tell a tight story set during the Napolenic Wars.
Its got some glorious moments in set pieces, but not a lot.
My vote for the best “painting” scene. They even pan out to show Jacques-Louis David sketching it.
The battles themselves are not, er, ideally done. They aren’t going to compete with Bondarchuk in any way. In some moments they are silly, as when Napoleon joins his cavalry in a charge.
Its certainly not “tight”. Its fair to say Scott bit off more than he could chew.
I mean the coronation is the best “painting” scene.
Napoleon should have been played by a younger man, IMHO. Easier to make a young man old than the other way.
The seen with the mummy is obliquely referenced/repeated in the scene where Napoleon dies on St. Helena.
In this case, IMHO, a very great deal of what was in this certainly belonged there, if it was to be a study of a character. There was way too much in there as it was, however, and a vast range of things had to be left out or mentioned in passing.
Napoleon was a scoundrel. Swept to power by a movement made to end monarchies, he made himself a monarch. Later he abandoned the defeated Grande Armee to freeze in the Russian wastes, while he was chauffeured swiftly back to Paris in his fancy coach.
The British eventually poisoned him, of course. And years later, somehow Napoleon III was given a particularly skittish horse to ride while out with a small British patrol in Natal. The rest of the party escaped. His horse escaped. He didn’t.
That’s right. I said Napoleon was “sprawling and aimless.” The Duelists, which was one of his first movies, was tight.
We are all losers, in the end.
What matters is what did we leave behind, for better or worse. In Napoleons case (the real, historical one), he changed Europe, and the world, in profound ways, for better AND worse.
You get a hint of both in literature, rec. the “Red and the Black” and “Charterhouse of Parma”, Stendhal, for what he meant just shortly after his passing. If you want a straight analysis, Napoleon is a theme running in background throughout Paul Johnsons “The Birth of the Modern”.
That is one criticism I’ve heard: trying to put too much into it. And as a result, there was not enough focus on any one thing. For myself, I’m more interested in the official history of Napolean than in his personal life. I wish there would have been more of that.
There was no ahistorical woke in this one that I could see. Josephine was what she was, and IMHO quite well written in this. This is no feminist screed.
There was one black guy acting as one of Napoleons generals in a few scenes. There was an actual black guy among Naps Generals, Gen Dumas (yes, the daddy of Alexandre “Three Musketeers” Dumas). He did have a substantial role as a Napoleon partisan in his rise to power, so legit. There were also a couple of mulatto servants of Josephine’s, which is also fair, as she was from Martinique.
“And years later, somehow Napoleon III was given a particularly skittish horse to ride while out with a small British patrol in Natal. The rest of the party escaped. His horse escaped. He didn’t.”
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Napoleon III died in his bed while in exile in Chislehurst, Kent, England on January 9, 1873. His son was killed while in the British Army fighting the Zulus in 1879.
The son of Napoleon III you mean, the Prince Imperial. He and his mother Eugenie were living in exile in Britain. The young fellow insisted on being a war tourist for his own reasons.
That is a genuine conspiracy theory about the horse. There is way too much randomness in that incident to ascribe a plot.
A pity that Stanley Kubrick never got to make his version of Napoleon.
I remember in the past critics ripping up movies. Fifty years later those movies are still hits on TV and the critics are long forgotten.
Ask again in 30 years and we will see.
The only big name I trust is Tom Cruise. He's using the same formula and it's still working. He seems to be immune to the woke virus (in making decent movies).
The eight hour long War and Peace (1966) is well worth the it as is WATERLOO (1970). got them on DVD.
I wanted to see this NAPOLEON movie at the theater (first time in 13 years) but I am too old to go out at nights. I did watch the 1927 version of NAPOLEON and will wait for the DVD.
Also watched IS PARIS BURNING?(1966) when the nazis rig the grave to be blown up. Then one of them looks at Napoleon’s victories and stops at the word....”MOSCOW,(sigh) Moscow!”
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