Customer Reviews

Napoleon [VHS]

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was lucky enough to see the very latest restoration of Napoleon by silent film expert Kevin Brownlow at the Royal Festival Hall in London earlier this month (December 2004). Carl Davis was there in person to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a live performance of his own brilliant score. It was the most moving and overwhelming cinematic experience of my life and I doubt whether it can ever be bettered. The film is decades ahead of its time, the bravura editing and inspired direction reveal Gance as the true genius that he was.

However...

The very performance I attended was under legal threats from Coppola, who wished to ban its screening. Back in 1980-81, he and his Zoetrope Studio helped fund a restoration and he got his father to compose a score. He helped get the US audiences to recognise what a remarkable work of genius Napoleon really is, and all credit to him for trying to do so. This would all seem very well and good, but even in 1981 Coppola wasn't showing the best version of the restored film that he could have. He had cut it down from Brownlow's (then) latest version to fit the score his father had written. He also showed it at 24 fps instead of the intended (and more realistic - the movements are at a normal rate, not unnaturally sped-up) 20 fps. Throughout the 1980s, Brownlow and others in Europe kept finding better elements and more footage. Yet, Coppola's version was still being called "THE restoration" and not altered at all. Brownlow also found prints with more authentic editing, giving a much better idea of the order and number of cuts in many sequences (so many versions/reels of Napoleon have had inferior takes/editing put in by people other than Gance that it took time to discover the best and most authentic). It was becoming increasingly clear that Coppola's version was very much flawed and out-of-date with the new discoveries. In 2000, the latest and most complete version available (including the authentic tints, near-definitive editing in line with Gance's intentions, and the best print so far etc.) was screened in London. Carl Davis had altered and lengthened his magnificent score to match the latest version. Even after this showing in 2000, elements were still being improved to make the film as close as possible to Gance's intentions. The 2004 screening which I attended had a print that ran for nearly 5 and a half hours. Coppola's version runs for less than 4 hours and it hasn't been touched to include any improvements in print quality or more authentic tinting or editing.

The Coppola version of Napoleon, with a run time of 223 minutes (3 hours and 43 minutes) is out on DVD in Australia. I do not know when or even if it will come out on DVD in the US. Rest assured, it will NOT be the best version of this great film, or anything close to it. Coppola and Zoetrope sold rights to their version of the film to Universal in the 1980s and so now the issue of rights has become entangled with a major studio (Universal Studios, incidentally, destroyed all their silent film negatives in 1947 - a very [in]appropriate choice of distributor for a film whose failure and subsequent neglect was mainly due to a horrendous re-editing by studios [MGM] in 1927).

The Australian DVD, released by Universal, is filled with faults. Apart from inferior image quality (unlike the 2004 print, which was superb and scarcely a speck of dirt was visible any time during the whole 5 and a half hours), the final triptych sequence is horrendously cropped from 3.66:1 to 2.55:1 and isn't even adjusted for widescreen televisions. It's also exactly the same version from 1981 which, even back then, wasn't the best there was available. The music, admirable though it is, cannot compare to Davis' score (he has worked on many other silent film scores with great acclaim) - especially now that Davis has reworked the score for the latest version.

Coppola's efforts to suppress the latest restoration are a dreadful example of precisely the kind of money-driven censorship and selfishness that Napoleon has been dogged by for eighty years. Not just the 90 minutes of extra footage, but the score and print quality itself, makes the latest print by the BFI/BFA/Brownlow indispensable. Anyone who claims to have rescued this film (as Coppola did in 1981, even though Brownlow had been working for decades before then, alongside Gance himself, to remaster the film) and yet tries to ban a closer version to the original film is monstrously hypocritical. As much as I welcome any hope of seeing Napoleon on DVD, I recoil at the thought of thousands of people being forced to watch a terribly flawed and inferior version of this masterpiece. Even as I type, there are rumours of even more lost footage from Napoleon being found in Denmark - with any luck this will lead to an even better restoration than the 2004 one.

This ongoing saga of restoration (and much credit is due to the person who seems to have the least legal rights out of the whole cast of those involved in the restored film: Kevin Brownlow) means that a DVD release of the Coppola version, with its many flaws, seems absurd and remarkably selfish and damaging. This film desperately needs to be released on DVD, but only in as close a form as possible to Gance's original masterpiece of 1927, seen by far too few people. That US rights-holders are trying to ban better versions with over 90 minutes extra in them is just another sad chapter in the story of this much-abused wonder of cinema. This is a magnificent film and deserves better than the shoddy and selfish treatment it has been given in America.

Having now had a chance to properly digest the offerings of the Coppola version (courtesy of the Australian DVD) I can now add to my previous review. (I'd also like to correct a mistake in my previous review: I said that the original triptych has a ratio of 3.66:1. It is in fact 3.99:1 - a further reason that a proper widescreen transfer is needed.)

Apart from the 90+ missing minutes, the main fault is the image quality. Some of my favourite shots are ruined because of the bad quality of the film stock available for the 1980-1 version. There are stunningly beautiful shots of Napoleon being chased along the coast: the sun is burning through dark clouds right at the top of the frame, hills loom out of the mist across the sea, whilst a dark mass of land forms a black strip at the bottom of the frame, as Napoleon and his pursuers ride across the screen beneath this incredible sky. These shots are some of the worst quality in Coppola's print. Many sequences were not made from original 35mm prints - only 17.5mm elements existed. As such, the 17.5mm had to blown up to the size of 35mm, with corresponding image deterioration. This is the reason why many scenes look far worse than they do in the latest prints (many better 35mm elements were available thanks to Brownlow and others' discoveries in the early and mid 1980s, but again Coppola/Zoetrope never bothered to incorporate these into their version).

There are also numerous examples of incorrect tinting (the original tinting and toning patterns being unclear back in 1980-1 until more discoveries of original prints in the 80s, which Coppola/Zoetrope decided to ignore, along with numerous other improvements). Another of my favourite shots is of Napoleon standing right on the edge of a rocky coastline - Gance has an incredible shot of the tiny silhouetted figure of Napoleon standing exactly in front of a setting sun behind him - the sun alone in a huge bank of cloud and Napoleon's isolated figure on top of these great rocks, the sea crashing beneath him. The scene looks much worse in this version because the tinting is a kind of pinky red, not the much more unobtrusive colour in the authentic version. The tinting here wasn't done using the traditional dye-bath methods used for the latest print by the BFI - the dye-bath gives a much subtler (and more beautiful in terms of actual colour) permeation of colour than other methods of coloration. Much of the tinting in this 1981 print seems far too vivid and often spoils some of the detail - something that dye-bath tinting and toning avoids.

I'm also reminded just how damaging running the film at a faster speed is. As I mentioned in my last review, Coppola sped the film up to 24 fps instead of showing it at the intended/correct speed of 20 fps. As a result, all the acting and the camerawork immediately becomes distorted (the swinging camera on the pendulum rope in the double storm sequence has lost some of the incredibly hypnotic rhythm it has at normal speed). Such a basic and fundamental thing as fps speed (often a key issue in silent films as they were often shot at slower fps rates) seems elementary to showing this film properly, but even this is ignored in the Coppola version.

Another damaging element to this version is the music - the Carmine Coppola music really is inferior to the Carl Davis score. There are hardly any moments of climax or great emotion at all. The double storm sequence loses much of its impact because of the music, as does the scene where the ghosts of the Convention appear before Napoleon and demand he carry on the Revolution. With Davis, there are incredibly sinister sliding strings and then the Marseillaise worked in to the score as the scene continues, concluding with a rousing finale. With Carmine Coppola, there is just vaguely rumbling organ music for the whole scene - no climax, no Marseillaise, no excitement. Davis also does something far more organic and complex with the classical music he uses - he works it into his own music and vice versa. For example, the Double Storm sequence uses a large amount of Beethoven's 6th, but it is subtly manipulated and expanded so that the climax is an immensely thrilling expansion of the original music and matches the images perfectly. Unlike Coppola, Davis also makes an effort to stick to historically contemporaneous music. He set himself the date of 1810, which he tried not to go beyond in terms of musical borrowing (whereas Coppola uses music by later composers like Berlioz and Mendelssohn). Carmine Coppola doesn't successfully combine his own music and historical music - there is no sense of perfect editing and organic musical melding as there is with Davis. My other main objection to Carmine Coppla's score is that it is always inferior to the images on screen - with Davis, the music remains brilliant and equal to the images for the whole of nearly 6 hours. The Davis score is thrilling, often intensely emotional, and vibrantly exciting in a way that Coppola never manages. Once you have listened to Davis' score, the Coppola simply cannot sustain your interest or emotion.

A proper release of this film is desperately needed on DVD. The possibilities for extras are huge (not a single extra being present on any DVD release of Napoleon at present). Further missing sequences might be included - such as the two other triptych sequences no longer in the film (in any version). Gance originally had three sequences edited for the triptych widescreen (the Victims' Ball, The Double Storm, and Entry into Italy), but the first two were destroyed by Gance himself when he lost all hope of seeing his film in one piece again. The reconstructed second triptych (by all accounts an intensely thrilling example of Gance's mastery of editing and visual imagination) does apparently exist in France, but another copyright issue means it hasn't been seen anywhere else. Gance also shot some scenes in Napoleon in colour (yes, colour in 1926) and in 3D (yes, 3D in 1926), although he didn't use this footage in the final cut (although rumours persist that some of these sections still exist somewhere in France...). There is also a long-lost scene that formed part of the Toulon section, where civilians are shot by firing-squads - examples of intensely imaginative rapid cutting and camera movement. An alternative single-screen ending was also made, which includes an extra scene with the character of Tristan Fleuri not in the triptych ending.

This film not only deserves a proper DVD release, but needs to be shown in cinemas. The effect of suddenly having a huge 60-foot wide image flood onto the screen when the triptych appears is quite simply a heart-stoppingly amazing moment - surely one of the greatest moments in all of cinema. The curtains are drawn and suddenly the Army of Italy appears spread out across the screen - words cannot do justice to this experience. That Coppola wanted to ban performances of this great work because they quite rightly refused to use his vastly inferior version and his father's music is monstrous. He would have denied the audience and future audiences this momentous experience, and that is unforgivable. The best version of Napoleon must be made available. The battle over this masterpiece is not over...

This is truly an unbelievable movie, one of the greatest movies of all time, no question. Every second of this movie you are sitting on the edge of your seat, and wanting to rewind it, and watch parts of it again, in slow motion. The acting is excellent, and the camera work, for the time, is mind-blowing. There is even some nudity, and shots of women dancing while nude under their dresses, in the party scene, where Napoleon meets Josephine. Talk about pushing the envelope. There is so much to this movie, one could write forever.

But, but but, here's the problem.

Francis Ford Coppola is actively blocking us from seeing the entire movie! His version, has cut out 90 minutes out of this great film, and it appears that Coppola does not want us to see the entire movie? Why is this?
Coppola knows this is one of the greatest movies of all time, and he got his father to write music for this version, so he obviously is practicing personal nepotism, to try and make his fathers music THE music of this great film. This is a tragedy, and is unethical, to say the least.

This is exactly like the Sofia Coppola nepotism disaster in Godfather III, when he cast his daughter who cannot act, and wrecked his own movie. Same deal here. He wants to force his dad's score down our throats, I guess, even at the expense of suppressing this movie. Carmine Coppola's score is pretty good, not too bad, but not great. For Coppola to SUPPRESS the full version of this great movie is beyond unethical. If he had any respect for this movie, he would release the long-full version, with 2 versions of the score. Why won't he do this? Is he afraid his father music won't cut it?

Anyway, I cannot express how angry I am that Coppola is suppressing this great movie, right as we speak, in 2006. I want to see the ENTIRE movie that now exists, and so does the world. Some major-league film critics need to try to "reason" with Coppola to get the full version released, and to try and get him to stop suppressing it. Otherwise, Coppola will severely damage his place in film history forever. What he is doing is not even about money. Its about him actively suppressing one of the greatest films of all time, for reasons of nepotism. Truly pathetic, and a crime against the cinema.

Here is a direct quote concerning this issue:

"Before the screening, by way of a prologue, Brownlow explained to the audience that Coppola was attempting to suppress the five hour version in favour of his own abbreviated edition, comparing his actions to those of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. Apparently, Coppola's agreement with Brownlow required that the film be played with Carmine Coppola's score in the US and that score was tied to the U.S/Coppola version. Davis reported that this could be the last performance of his compilation score, since the Coppola family claim to owns rights to the film and only wish it to be shown with music composed by Carmine Coppola."

also....
They can stop us but we can't stop them... It's about territories. They're saying that any showing anywhere in the world now has to have the Coppola score. It's Italian family stuff. You can't blame them in a way. It's just that they hadn't argued this before. It's only since the old man died in 1991 that they have become insistent on their rights." (Carl Davis, in an interview with Rick Jones: The Times, December 4th, 2004.)

One of the saddest stories in film history is the blighted career of Abel Gance, a filmmaking genius whose work is virtually unknown and unavailable, even today. Gance, to some degree, was the master of his own fate, since he seems to have lost his nerve after *Napoleon* flopped in America. That we have *Napoleon* at all today is thanks largely to besotted fan Kevin Brownlow, who spent years combing flea markets and film archives for any scrap of the original--a fair bit, we are told, was irretrievably lost, but the bulk of the film is here (the offical BFA print is about 45 minutes longer than the version released by Zoetrope, by the way).

Why not 5 stars? Maybe because a video version cannot hope to reproduce the awesome power of the three-screen ending--even wide-screen TVs don't give you the overwhelming sense of marching with Napoleon's army at the film's end. I was fortunate to have seen this film in a symphony hall with a live orchestra on its re-release, and the video is a pale souvenir of that experience. Maybe, also, because there are long stretches that don't quite hold up as well as they did in 1927--the political stuff is thrilling, as are the battle sequences, but there is, for example, a lengthy sojourn in Corsica with Napoleon's family that goes nowhere, and is pretty conventional silent-film fare. Gance's film suffers at times from naive hero worship and slushy sentimentality, even as it is cinematically daring and revloutionary. Still, at over 4 hours, you expect some bits to drag--see this film, if you can, for the recreation of the French Revolution (including an audacious silent-film rendering of the first public performance of "La Marseillaise"!), for the excellent "double storm" sequence, and for the glorious finish. See it, also, for some unforgettable character sketches--Robespierre and Antonin Artaud's Marat are brilliant, as is Gance's own portrayal of the ruthless St Just. With all its flaws, it's still astonishing, especially set against Kevin Brownlow's own story of the restoration.

In the DVD age, it would be nice to see a DVD version of the BFA Napoleon, as well as what's left of Gance's other magnificent silent films.

Follow-up, 2011:

My initial review is seven years old, and there's still no Napoleon DVD. Why not? Francis-Ford-Bloody-Coppola, that's why not. I've now seen the 1984 Brownlow/Davis version, and it's far superior, not only in image quality but in the music as well. There's also a 2000 restoration, longer and better than any other, that is being blocked because FFC is insisting we hear only his father's music when we watch the film. This is a crime against cinema, and it is unforgiveable that anyone should get away with this. Coppola himself had nothing to do with this film, and should not be allowed to prevent people from seeing this masterpiece in its best form possible. I saw a Blu-Ray edition of the three Godfather films going for $100.00 the other day, and nearly threw it across the store--I will never buy or watch anything associated with this egomaniac until he gets his mitts off Abel Gance's--and Kevin Brownlow's--far superior work.

Abel Gance's Napoleon was the best film I have ever seen about Napoleon because of its realistic portrayal of this great man.
Albert Dieudonne's portrayal of Napoleon was so impeccable, for a minute, I thought that Dieudonne was Napoleon.
The most unforgettable scene in the whole movie, in my opinion, was Napoleon addressing his troops from high up in the mountains
with Le Chant de Depart, the stirring French revolutionary war song playing in the film's soundtrack. This scene so lifted my spirits up, I felt like enlisting in Napoleon's army and fighting for him.

I am indebted to Carmine Coppola, the composer of this film's soundtrack, for introducing me for the first time some of the most beautiful and inspiring French revolutionary song tunes I've ever heard, Le Chant de Depart, Ah Ca Ira, and La Carmagnole. These melodies together with the world famous La Marseillaise greatly added authenticity to the period which this film realistically portrayed.

Remarkable, engrossing epic that was something of a life work for its inspired director Abel Gance. Re-issued after restoration, with much fanfare, in 1981. The story deals with Napleons youth and early successes, rather than his Empire days. Indeed the making of this movie was an epic seemingly as long and inspired as its subject. Among a torrent of innovations, Gance had cameras mounted on moving objects such as firing cannon; shot a segment in color and another in a 3-D process similar to those popular in the 1950s (but in 1927!) but decided that he didnt like these effects after all; and pioneered wide-screen film, with three adjacent cameras making contiguous images, in outdoor segments seen in the later parts of the 1981 release. The hell of it is, this film is not about film technique but rather about the story and the actors. Gance himself appears as the revolutionary leader Louis Antoine de Saint-Just; Albert Dieudonné in the title role is possessed by his character, whom he well mimics in appearance; and you wont forget Robespierre, peering at the world and his colleagues through his sinister dark glasses. Although released on black-and-white film, many scenes are tinted (in, naturally, the Tricolor blue-white-and-red), with some of the three-camera wide-screen segments underscoring this point via simultaneous Tricolor tinting.

Though I dont know this for certain, it would not surprise me if this movie showed up on top-10 lists of many serious film buffs. That is, film buffs who have actually seen a few films besides the latest Tom Cruise, and therefore have basis from which to comment. (...). Film buffs long familiar with major films like Intolerance and Battleship Potemkin and The Red Balloon and the Warners 1940s _films noirs_ and Bondarchuks War and Peace (the largest feature film ever made, by several measures) and La Ronde and 8 ½ and Shadows of [Our] Forgotten Ancestors and Witness for the Prosecution and All Quiet on the Western Front and Olympia and Grand Illusion and the Powell-Pressburger spy dramas and Green for Danger and Mon Oncle and A Man for All Seasons and It Happened One Night, that sort of thing.

There are very few movies I've had to watch again immediately after a first viewing. Napoleon is one of them. I came to this movie expecting to force-sit through it. What I found was a compelling, moving, endlessly fascinating work of art, rich with emotion and humor, and surprising for the overall quality of acting. Even without the many technical effects, this would be a great film. With them, it offers a platform for a host of questions as to why so few films since this film have celebrated the possibilities of the medium so fully and gone the full length of risk-taking. If you are at all interested in the history of film, or film as medium, by all means see this video. I'm sure it can't measure up to a theatrical showing, but it's all we have unless we get lucky and a showing comes to town. The scoring is not bad for this silent, either; I found it rousing in the right places, with some good choices from symphonic works (I believe Berlioz and Beethoven) along the way.

I first saw the movie Napoleon in the theater and I was amazed at the effects Abel Gance was able to come up with that appear to be the way movies were to be seen today for widescreen effects. The montage at the last twenty minutes of the movie when the screen appeared regular size for a theater then the side curtains go up to make the battle scene appear lifesize and the eagle with wings spread across the screen when the montage appeared was pure genius. I would highly recommend this movie for any silent movie buff or anyone interested in Napoleon.

...At least I thought so when I first saw this MASTERPIECE at the Colony Theater in Shaker Heights (Cleveland), Ohio back in the early 1980's ( I still have the program guide ). It ran nearly 4 hours!!! I was mezmorized. It was presented by Francis Ford Coppola of GODFATHER fame. The score was by Francis's father Carmine Coppola, which I thought was fantastic!!!
Please, Francis...if somehow you are preventing the future release of a superior version of this great masterpiece simply because of legal rights pending your father's score, then shame on you many times over!!! Get it done!!! You've got the money, you've got the fame...I've even enjoyed DEMENTIA 13!!!! & I want to see as complete a version of this film as possible!!! I loved your father's score. I bought the album. I bought the cd. It will probably always be THE NAPOLEON SCORE to me as well as to others!!!
Francis,...I really want the most complete version of Abel Gance's NAPOLEON as possible...Don't screw this up.

This movie is fantastic! I hope it will soon appear on DVD.