Customer Reviews

The Emperor's New Clothes

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I found this a delightful movie and am sorry it had such a limited theatrical release (it only played one week in Austin and I was not able to see it at that time). Thanks be for the DVD, which is crystal clear and in widescreen, although there are no extras. I think your reaction to it might depend on your familiarity with (or sympathy to) Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. Those more knowledgeable about his life and career will find more nuances to Ian Holm's characterization and more depth in the story. Others may find this film too slow or mystifying. For my part, and as an admitted sympathetic Bonapartist -- Napoleon was a great man in every sense of the word, with great failings as well as great skills and sometimes even virtues -- this film grows on me with every viewing and I keep finding more little gems of detail to treasure.

It's not the ha-ha comedy I initially expected, and perhaps the script could have used a few more humorous scenes, given the potential in the subject matter, but it would not be fair to criticize the movie for not being something it did not set out to be. Napoleon's chance visit to the battlefield of Waterloo, now catering to tourists, is comical in a typically low-key way. The pacing may be too leisurely to some, but this says more about our Hollywood-shaped sensibilities than what director Alan Taylor had in mind. This is not a cookie-cutter, by-the-numbers movie. It's a gentle slice of whimsy and romance made for an audience that can appreciate a movie with no car crashes, machine guns, or bimbos.

The central theme is transformation: can a man remake himself utterly, and in so doing, gain a second chance at happiness? Napoleon the Emperor (a masterful performance by Holm, who is a passable lookalike to the genuine article) begins this movie a very different man than who we see at the end, when Napoleon the Greengrocer "surrenders" at last to an opponent that has bested him -- the kind and good woman who prefers the reality of Eugene Lenormand to the phantom of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a difficult journey for Napoleon/Eugene to make, and we follow the Emperor's struggle to tame his old ambitions and talents, occasionally harnessing them for a good cause -- his mustering and "battle orders" to the assembled fruit peddlers is a masterful sequence, the old Napoleon of Marengo and Austerlitz, history's greatest soldier, rising one last time to lead his forces to a brilliant victory. But finally, when he is tricked by an adversary into entering a madhouse, he is confronted with the monstrous reality of what he was -- a madman, a creature fit only to be locked up, even as Napoleon himself was caged on an island prison. It is the moment of realization for Napoleon/Eugene, when he recognizes that the desire to be a Napoleon is itself an act of lunacy. Confronted by the enormity of who he once was but need no longer be, he is at last able to make the break and cross over into a new life. He has no throne, but he is now content to rule a smaller kingdom, one with a joy and richness such as he could have never before attained. A thoroughly satisfying ending. L'Empereur est mort; vive l'Empereur!

Napoleon died in 1821 in comfortable exile on the island of St. Helena, right? Nope. That's the alternative history premise in the lighthearted THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES.

Ian Holm, recently seen on the big screen as Bilbo Baggins in LORD OF THE RINGS, does double duty as Bonaparte and his look-alike, Eugene Lenormand. The latter is a swab jockey pulled off a passing merchant ship and secretly substituted for Bonaparte on St. Helena while the Emperor sets sail on the same vessel for France in the guise of the common sailor (with all his attendant duties). The plan is that, after enough time is allowed Napoleon to reach Paris, Lenormand will announce himself as a fraud to his British jailers, a revelation sure to make all the supermarket tabloids. Reading of this in Paris, the Emperor will emerge from the closet, so to speak, and retake his throne with the help of widespread popular support. The plan doesn't take into account that Eugene might enjoy his new existence in captivity. As he remarks to the French conspirators, he's been scrubbing ships' decks for all the years that Napoleon was Emperor, and now it's his turn to be pampered. So, in the meantime, the real Napoleon must cool his heels in Paris while staying in the home of the widow Truchaut (Iben Hjejle), alias "Pumpkin", who manages a cadre of street-roaming melon sellers. As luck would have it, Pumpkin's husband, who was one of the very few plotters privy to Napoleon's escape plan, died shortly before the Emperor's arrival. Oh, well.

Holm is splendid in his dual role, and Hjejle is engaging as Pumpkin. However, the two together, especially Holm's Napoleon persona, never quite made this viewer believe that the pair had a future together no matter how much Pumpkin wanted it. Having said that, the film's lesson is that sometimes being content with less is a virtue that is its own reward. Bonaparte has this epiphany when, in one of the movie's best scenes, he's introduced to several other "Napoleons" by a physician friend of Pumpkin's. And Holm certainly looks the part, especially because of his relatively short stature. There's a scene, a sight gag in itself, where Bonaparte is hugged by a former member of his Imperial Guard, an old comrade-in-arms apparently over six feet tall, and the Emperor is almost smothered in the clothing at the man's waist. Also to the film's credit is the cinematography and special FX, which effectively depict early 19th century Paris.

For me, the greatest flaw in this otherwise excellent film was the logic behind the storyline. Rather than leave control of events to the imposter left behind on St. Helena, Napoleon should have revealed himself to those he knew in Paris, some of whom would have certainly been of high social importance, and then, his identity established to their satisfaction, held a joint press conference with photo ops. (Even Pumpkin's doctor realized the true identity of her lodger for reasons I shall not reveal here.) That would have left the British to prove that their captive was not the real deal, a dodgy undertaking at best. However, such an approach by the scriptwriters would certainly have resulted in a film not nearly so much fun. Come to think of it, THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES is a gem best left like it is.

I put off watching "The Emperor's New Clothes" for a while because the cover art for the DVD made me think that this was going to be something of a silly comedy. We see Ian Holm as Napoleon Bonaparte, decked out in his standard military outfit, with the lipstick imprint of a kiss on his cheek. Consequently I was expecting something a bit zany, with Holm mugging for the camera and the usual sort of hilarity that goes on when people trade identities in movies. Boy, was I wrong.

The screenplay by director Alan Taylor (who directs a lot of series on HBO) and his co-writers Kevin Molony ("Sylvester") and Herbie Wave ("The Closer You Get") is based on the novel "The Death of Napoleon" by Simon Leys. The premise is deceptively simple: while exiled on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon switched places with Eugene Lenormand, a simple sailor who looked like the deposed Emperor of France. While Lenormand pretended to be Napoleon, the man himself would sail in Lenormand's place on the ship, return to France, contact loyal men who would get him to Paris, and take control of the nation once again from the Borbons. However, a couple of problems develop. The first is that Napoleon is deposited not in France, but Belgium, while the other is that Lenormand likes being Napoleon in exile and refuses to admit he is an imposter.

Napoleon makes his way by coach to Paris, and because he starts in Brussels he ends up at a stop in Waterloo, where the curious come to see the famous battlefield and buy mementoes of the Emperor's defeat. "They've changed my battlefield," Napoleon says, but that is not all that has changed since then. Falling asleep in a bed beneath a sign that is now true if it was not before, he has been left behind by the carriage and is waited on by barmaid, Adele Raffin (Hayley Carmichael). He becomes aware that she is nice to him, not because of who he is as the Emperor but because of who SHE is as a person. Napoleon has the good grace to thank her for being kind to him and suggest for the first time that he rertains some aspect of humanity.

What follows is that Napoleon reaches Paris and discovers his contact has died, leaving a widow, named Nicole Truchaut (Iben Hjejle), but called "Pumpkin," and a son. With no where else to go for the moment, Napoleon stays with the family and suddenly becomes aware that the family has lost all of its possessions because they are unable to pay for the melons that have been delivered. Napoleon, a man who can be killed but not insulted, has larger concerns, but the next thing he knows he is addressing the melon merchants on how to take advantage of the hot weather to sell their crop. He has tacked maps up on the wall and addresses them like they are troops in his army. The locals are totally captivated and launch his plan into action, while Napoleon is unaware that he has started down a different road from the path of glory he had planned.

Holm has played Napoleon twice before, in "Time Bandits" and a television mini-series called "Napoleon and Love," so there is that experience as well as his acknowledged acting talent that contribute to this wonderfully measured performance. You might think that caricature of Napoleon Bonaparte is inevitable, but Holm will persuade you otherwise. Hjejle plays a woman who is grounded in the life she is being forced to live and who refuses to let any delusions that the man sharing her bed is the Emperor Napoleon get in the way of the better life she glimpses for herself and her son. But she has spurned the advances of Dr. Lambert (Tim McInnerny), who is more than suspicious about the man who calls himself Eugene Lenormand, even though the papers have announced the death of Napoleon in exile.

I rounded up on this 2001 movie for two reasons. The first is that I loved the way it walks the fine line dictated by the film's story. Being whimsical is rather difficult because it is a delicate affair and "The Emperor's New Clothes" manages it, largely because of the performances by Holm. Neither of his characters goes off the deep end, although both are often positioned to do so. My second reason is that there when Napoleon tries to get his identity acknowledged by the one person in Paris who knows he is telling the truth there is a scene that I should have seen coming and did not. I was so intent on going along for the ride in this one that despite being well aware that Napoleon returned to power from Elba but not St. Helena that I was not anticipating how this story would play out. I thought that maybe my lowered expectations were making this film seem better than it was, but I watched it a second time paying attention to how things were set up and it is that good of a film.

This film has a rather simple concept: the Emperor Napoleon is replaced in St; Helena by a commoner who looks like him. It is how this story develops that makes it interesting and a delight.

The Emperor's New Clothes is one of those films that is hard to categorize. I would have to say it is a drama with comic overtones. An example of some comedy, when Napoleon, now disguised as Eugene, is deposited at the Battlefield of Waterloo, he visits an inn where he finds a bed with a sign over it reading: "Napoleon Slept Here." In fact, he never had slept in the bed, and promptly falls asleep on it. The frustration Napoleon/Eugene feels when he cannot reveal his true identity is the dramatic side of the story, and really the tenor of the film.

The film is very well acted, especially by Ian Holm playing the dual roles of the Emperor Napoleon and Eugene, a deck hand who resembles him. A marvelous scene is the one where Ian Holm plan an "attack" on the people of Paris in order to supply them with melons. Iben Hjejle is outstanding as the wife of Napoleon's contact in Paris, who turns out to be dead when the emperor arrives at his destination. The locations for the film were in Italy, and they stand in well for the Paris of the pre-Grand Boulevard days. The producers saw to every detail of costume, period transport and furnishings, and these factors make this a visually stunning film. The music score by Rachel Portman (Chocolat) is very beautiful and I am sorry that it was not issued on CD.

I wish we could have had more of Ian Holm in the Eugene/Napoleon character and more interaction with the courtiers who are desperately trying to get him to admit he is not the emperor. Also, even though the ex-soldiers take pride in the glory of being in Napoleon's army, there is little of the misery that happened, but it is touched upon and a point is made. In the end, Napoleon is at peace with the personality and situation he is left with, and that resolution makes for a happy ending of this impressive film.

This film version of Simon Leys' 1995 novel (recently released in paperback with a cover picture of Ian Holm from this film) follows the original story fairly closely. Though Holm is too old for the role (Napoleon was 51 in 1820, and chubby), he does a nice job capturing the ex-emperor's mannerisms and personality. A few historical anachronisms aside, the tale of an emperor who returns from exile (a second time!) to take control of France, only to end up happily as a wholesale fruit merchant is a pleasurable one, with the director treading a fine line between comedy and semi-tragedy.

Some ideas aren't fully developed--a clearer depiction of the impact of Napoleon's reign and wars on France (though his lover/partner does refer once to the emperor having populated France with "widows and orphans") would help, and his strategizing of the takeover of the Paris street fruit market seems to be confined to a single day's sales. And while Holm expresses the predictable petulance and frustration that a former ruler in obscurity might feel, we see little of Napoleon's well-documented capacity for ruthlessness and indifference to others.

Holm/Napoleon's gradual realization that no one really cares about him anymore is (intentionally or not) historically accurate. Many commentators in 1821 remarked on how little public excitement there was over his death. The wave of nostalgia for the Empire that led to the return of his body to France in 1840 had to wait for the next generation--fired up by Romantic historians and poets like Victor Hugo--which could see only the "glory" of the Empire and overlook its terrible cost in lost lives and liberties. Leys' conceit (that through these unknown events a common sailor lies in Napoleon's tomb in the Invalides), though slight, is a ironic counterpart to the cult that still surrounds his memory for many.

I've been on a Napoleon kick lately. It started when I read the first five of the "Sharpe's Rifles" novels. Then I realized the Peninsular campaign, of which the British are so proud, was barely even a sideshow in the Napoleonic wars, and that I didn't know anything about the main events. So I started reading and watching.

I've recently seen this film and a French film, called "Monsieur N.", which shares the same premise, namely that Napoleon switched places with a double and slipped away from his captivity on St. Helena. But "Monsieur N." was joyless, grim, and depressing, whereas this film is a joy and a pleasure. At times broadly comic, at other times remarkably insightful, the film is always whimsical and never forgets that it is essentially a fantasy. The French "Monsieur N.", by contrast, takes its premise seriously and thus is about as much fun (and about as grimly conspiratorial) as Oliver Stone's "JFK."

There are many moments of hilarity in this film, but it takes an interesting, serious turn when examining how a person like Napoleon would react when his plan to regain the throne explodes. Not only that, but people believe he is crazy when he claims to be Napoleon. It is easy to imagine him reacting just as depicted here.

This story is a beautiful alternative history to Napoleon's last exile. Rather than finishing his days quietly on an island, Napoleon returns to France with the intent to recreate his empire. The story and the acting are outstanding. Ian Holm and Iben Hjejle are great together (btw, Tim McInnerny [Blackadder fame] is outstanding as a supporting actor), Ian Holm portraying Napoleon as few others can and Iben Hjejle portraying the woman who helps him. In addition, the pieces and clothing set the period very nicely (I love seeing the former member of the Old Guard with his heavily worn clothing, a nice setting for the period). Rating wise this is a five star piece for me. My favorite part is when Napoleon explains to the melon sellers how they'll sell melons the next dayt. Ian Holm shows us how Napoleon might have taken a thing like selling melons, assessed the proper means to deliver the goods to the people who can afford it, and then tells the 'troops' how to execute it! A superb piece!

The Emperor's New Clothes got lost in the shuffle when FilmFour went to the wall, sitting on the shelf for a couple of years before a negligible release. Like the film itself, the premise had been around for years - Winston Churchill once pitched a variation to Charlie Chaplin - although it took decades to reach the screen: Napoleon never actually died on St Helena but escaped, leaving a double behind. Unfortunately the Emperor's plans to return to power were rather cut short by the double being unwilling to give up his cushy life on the island and own up to his true identity, and then compounding his sin by keeling over and dying, leaving the real Napoleon adrift in a Paris where nobody believes him and the asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon. Alan Taylor's film never quite makes enough of its premise and the last act is a little scruffy around the edges as Ian Holm's little Emperor finds himself settling down with Iben Hjejle's widowed fruit seller, planning her street sales campaign with military precision, but it's a pleasing little number that gets by on wistful charm rather than biting satire. It never quite comes to grips with France's divided attitude to Napoleon's legacy - part dictator, part liberator - although it takes some nice digs at the post-Napoleonic tourist trade as Waterloo becomes a tourist trap filled with souvenir sellers and inns where Napoleon slept ("I've never set foot in this place in my life," notes Napoleon before dozing off on a bed under a `Napoleon slept here' sign). Extremely likeable.

Another softer side of Napolean? This movie is well-plotted and delightful. We're given another story, besides the one in the history books, where Napolean trades places with a look alike so he can return to France and once again rule as emporer. The only trouble is Napolean's double doesn't want to fess up to being the fake! Napolean's madly driven ego begins to get nibbled away by love. When he's shown some harsh results of his rule, he must also question whether or not he is the best thing for France, or if they even desire for him to come back. Great movie!

Chrissy K. McVay - Author

This film is absolutely wonderful. Ian Holm is amazing in this fictitious account of Napoleon. The story is fun and makes you wonder if something like this could have happened. Of course it is not true but the literary license is clever, well written and performed. The story is character driven and creatively explores the emotions and thoughts of a post war exiled emperor. A delightful tale with a love interest and a satisfying ending. It is completely entertaining. One of my favorite films of the year. I highly recommend it!!!