Four-star movie: Napoleon
Feb. 1st, 2015 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelNapoléon
Director: Abel Gance
Year: 1927
Generally I try not to read too much about a movie before I watch it; I want to do my studying afterward, so others' interpretations don't have a major influence on mine. In this case, that meant that when I started watching five hours of biographical epic about Napoleon, I had expected it to cover most of his life, probably from birth to Waterloo. But no.
This was just his early life. It turns out Gance had originally planned to make five more movies (presumably each around the same length) to cover his early life through to his death on St. Helena. After he finished the first movie, he realized just what an undertaking that would be, despite having kept the battle scenes in this movie to a minimum.
In fact, this isn't even really a biography of Napoleon's early years. Rather, it's a compilation of selected incidents (some almost certainly apocryphal) from Napoleon's life juxtaposed with critical scenes from the French Revolution in which Napoleon played no part (such as the assassination of Marat).
As with many of the early four-star movies I watched, I can see why this one was groundbreaking while still not enjoying it particularly. Wikipedia says :
It did all that. It also heavy-handedly hammered in things that today a director would trust the audience to infer from much less information. There were also places where the director chose to break the fourth wall, such as the scene in Corsica where (in a cue card) he assures the audience that all the scenes were shot on location, signing the card with his name. I don't know if the scene where it is noted that he played a bit part was his choice or the restorers', but that was another one.
In the version I watched, all the cue cards were in English. Which brings me to the issue of versions. On Wikipedia, there are three full screens' worth of versions. I believe the one I watched was one of the Kevin Brownlow restorations. From the credits, it appears to have been intended for display on UK television. There is also a shorter (3.5 hour) restoration by Francis Ford Coppola, but I figured if I was only going to watch it once, I might as well go for as entire a version as I could.
For people interested in the history of silent film, I enthusiastically recommend this movie to them. As a historical epic, not so much.
Director: Abel Gance
Year: 1927
Generally I try not to read too much about a movie before I watch it; I want to do my studying afterward, so others' interpretations don't have a major influence on mine. In this case, that meant that when I started watching five hours of biographical epic about Napoleon, I had expected it to cover most of his life, probably from birth to Waterloo. But no.
This was just his early life. It turns out Gance had originally planned to make five more movies (presumably each around the same length) to cover his early life through to his death on St. Helena. After he finished the first movie, he realized just what an undertaking that would be, despite having kept the battle scenes in this movie to a minimum.
In fact, this isn't even really a biography of Napoleon's early years. Rather, it's a compilation of selected incidents (some almost certainly apocryphal) from Napoleon's life juxtaposed with critical scenes from the French Revolution in which Napoleon played no part (such as the assassination of Marat).
As with many of the early four-star movies I watched, I can see why this one was groundbreaking while still not enjoying it particularly. Wikipedia says :
The film is recognized as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects.
It did all that. It also heavy-handedly hammered in things that today a director would trust the audience to infer from much less information. There were also places where the director chose to break the fourth wall, such as the scene in Corsica where (in a cue card) he assures the audience that all the scenes were shot on location, signing the card with his name. I don't know if the scene where it is noted that he played a bit part was his choice or the restorers', but that was another one.
In the version I watched, all the cue cards were in English. Which brings me to the issue of versions. On Wikipedia, there are three full screens' worth of versions. I believe the one I watched was one of the Kevin Brownlow restorations. From the credits, it appears to have been intended for display on UK television. There is also a shorter (3.5 hour) restoration by Francis Ford Coppola, but I figured if I was only going to watch it once, I might as well go for as entire a version as I could.
For people interested in the history of silent film, I enthusiastically recommend this movie to them. As a historical epic, not so much.
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Date: 2015-02-02 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-02 03:45 pm (UTC)Which is to say, the version I watched, which despite contradictory evidence appears to be the 1983 Channel 4 UK cut, didn't have the triple-screen finale. I gather that Brownlow only had rights to the center panel when he did that restoration. (Contradictions are the running time -- 5:15 on mine vs. the listed running time of 4:50 -- and the fact that my copy was tinted, which Wikipedia says it wasn't. I wonder if the time difference was a result of conversion from PAL to NTSC.)
However, I also had access to the Francis Ford Coppola restoration, which does have the finale in triple-screen, and I watched only the triple-screen portion of that version. I have a large television, as such things go (52 inches? don't remember for sure), and it barely worked. I'd love to see that on a large theatre screen as it was intended, mostly for historical purposes. I'd have to say Gance's ambition outran the technology in that regard.