This film is epic in its design, but dull on delivery. This story, about the early days of Napoleon, shows us the quiet emotionless mastermind, who is totally immersed in his quest to conquer all. After the snowball fight in the beginning of the film, which foreshadows the future of Napoleon, the whole of the film is a little bit confusing, complicated and it lost me a lot. I hope that isn't a commentary on me, but I lost my way a couple of times. That is about it when we talk about the bad stuff.
It was tough though, but this film does offer some great technical gems for the eye to see. Every shot seemed like it was perfectly composed. There is no better camerawork than there was from the masters of the pioneering era. There were lots and lots of close-ups, rapidly fired editing cuts in some scenes and there was some decent sepia-tone colors used for the film cells. Each scene was covered in beautiful stuff, especially the reds & blues.
The claim to fame for this film is that director Abel Gance wanted to show the climactic battle at the end of the movie in a scale as big as possible. Being that the film was in 4:3, how would he do that? They came upon the idea of shooting the scene with three cameras, then showing the film simultaneously on three film projectors. It was effective, bold and I am glad all copies from each camera still exist. By the way, we are not talking Waterloo here. The battle mentioned earlier happened much earlier in Napoleon's life. What happened was this film was supposed to be Part One in a series of films about Napoleon but like most big ideas ...... the funding ran out.
7.5 (C+ MyGrade) = 7 IMDB.
It was tough though, but this film does offer some great technical gems for the eye to see. Every shot seemed like it was perfectly composed. There is no better camerawork than there was from the masters of the pioneering era. There were lots and lots of close-ups, rapidly fired editing cuts in some scenes and there was some decent sepia-tone colors used for the film cells. Each scene was covered in beautiful stuff, especially the reds & blues.
The claim to fame for this film is that director Abel Gance wanted to show the climactic battle at the end of the movie in a scale as big as possible. Being that the film was in 4:3, how would he do that? They came upon the idea of shooting the scene with three cameras, then showing the film simultaneously on three film projectors. It was effective, bold and I am glad all copies from each camera still exist. By the way, we are not talking Waterloo here. The battle mentioned earlier happened much earlier in Napoleon's life. What happened was this film was supposed to be Part One in a series of films about Napoleon but like most big ideas ...... the funding ran out.
7.5 (C+ MyGrade) = 7 IMDB.