Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made [Hardcover]

Alison Castle (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2011

The fascinating tale of Kubrick’s unfilmed masterpiece

Now available in an unlimited, single-volume edition!

For 40 years, Kubrick fans and film buffs have wondered about the director's mysterious unmade film on Napoleon Bonaparte. Slated for production immediately following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick’s "Napoleon" was to be at once a character study and a sweeping epic, replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras. To write his original screenplay, Kubrick embarked on two years of intensive research; with the help of dozens of assistants and an Oxford Napoleon specialist, he amassed an unparalleled trove of research and preproduction material, including approximately 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. No stone was left unturned in Kubrick's nearly-obsessive quest to uncover every piece of information history had to offer about Napoleon. But alas, Kubrick’s movie was not destined to be: the film studios, first M.G.M. and then United Artists, decided such an undertaking was too risky at a time when historical epics were out of fashion.

TASCHEN’s tribute to this unmade masterpiece makes Kubrick’s valiant work on "Napoleon" available to fans for the first time. Based on the original 2009 limited edition which featured ten books hidden inside of a carved out reproduction of a Napoleon history book, this publication brings all the original elements together in one volume. Herein, all of the books from the original edition are reproduced in facsimile: correspondence, costume studies, location scouting photographs, research material, script drafts, and more. Kubrick’s final draft is reproduced in its entirety.

The text book features the complete original treatment, essays examining the screenplay in historical and dramatic contexts, an essay by Jean Tulard on Napoleon in cinema, and a transcript of interviews Kubrick conducted with Oxford professor Felix Markham. The culmination of years of research and preparation, this unique publication offers readers a chance to experience the creative process of one of cinema’s greatest talents as well as a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic figure that was Napoleon Bonaparte.

*Includes access to searchable/downloadable online research database: Kubrick's complete picture file of nearly 17,000 Napoleonic images*

Editorial Reviews

Review

"You have to see it to believe it, which is appropriate when you consider Kubrick's obsession... it could be that the project has found its perfect home as the most grandiose book ever made." (New York Magazine)"

About the Author

Alison Castle received a BA in philosophy from Columbia University and an MA in photography and film from New York University (NYU/International Center of Photography masters program). She is the editor of titles on photography, film, and design, including Some Like it Hot and The Stanley Kubrick Archives.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1112 pages
• Publisher: Taschen; Har/Psc Mu edition (April 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3836523353
• ISBN-13: 978-3836523356
• Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 3 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Movies > Screenplays
  • #60 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Movies > Direction & Production

• Due to this item's unusual size or weight, it requires special handling and will ship separately from other items in your order. Read More

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A rather insane volume containing a great story December 9, 2009

By D. Boen

Format:Hardcover

Ten books inside this massive green behemoth tell and illustrate the story of how Kubrick attempted to make this period epic for MGM right after 2001: A Space Odyssey. But a cash crunch in Hollywood at the end of the 60's, 2001's not-blockbuster numbers, and a flop from DiLaurentis called Waterlloo convinced MGM to pull out. The production was shelved, stored by Kubrick on his farm, where it sat until recently. Finally his estate has decided to revive this treasure trove of research, scriptwriting, costume planning and location scouting to a small monument of books filled with terrific historical text, photos of archived notes and correspondence, photographs, production details and techniques, and the final script. It's a movie in a box, waiting to be made. Serious, scholarly discussion of the subjects complement an embarrassment of photographic riches to fill up this beautiful, one of a kind volume for serious study of the process of independent film production. The product design of this monster is one-of-a-kind. It's worth every penny.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary April 10, 2010

By Tom Lavagnino

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a Kubrick nut. If you're also a Kubrick nut, you will find NAPOLEON endlessly fascinating -- the literary equivalent of an ten-course meal at a five-star restaurant at the best restaurant you could ever possibly formulate in your imagination. Despite its cost, this publication does not disappoint. And what's fascinating to me is that -- despite NAPOLEON's comprehensiveness, from a "macro" standpoint -- a studious reader garners true, unbridled insight into the quotidian methodology of Kubrick's wholly astringent sensibility. This is thanks to the exhaustively collected (and beautifully reproduced) letters and memos (both from and to Stanley) and -- even more significantly -- the "hand-written annotations" that appear, throughout the material, in Kubrick's own hand. Particularly given the time-frame during which the bulk of this material was created -- in the immediate aftermath, for the most part, of 2001 -- it's fascinating to witness the means by which Stanley was leveraging his success (to ostensibly actuate his dream project), and the extent to which his reach occasionally (and ultimately) exceeded his grasp. Kubrick's insight into the workings of the Hollywood studio system is also on evidence; viz., there's a full draft of the NAPOLEON screenplay included, but the script's (somewhat schematic) side-stepping of the contemplated scope of the more ambitiously contemplated battlefield-centric production sequences (for example : Wellington appears, in the climactic clash, but has nary a line of dialogue) subtly suggests Kubrick's savvy insofar as making the project as financially palatable as possible to Hollywood's powers-that-be. As mentioned by other reviewers, the ancillary "costuming," "production design," and other magnificently-reproduced photographic volumes add immesurably to the experience. I spent a full weekend plumbing this thing, and it was a weekend well spent (and one I look forward to undertaking again, at some point in the future) (as with future viewings of Kubrick's masterpieces).

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Designed for Stanley April 1, 2011

By Gabriel

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In this book one can pore over Stanley Kubrick's personal correspondences as well as the screenplay, saying nothing of the 100's of photos. The content is incredible.

Stanley Kubrick's passion for research, beauty, and functional organization is no secret. It is ironic and unfortunate, that this book was incredibly well researched, meticulous in what was put in (and left out), well organized, but was printed in an odd format, in a way that stifles clear communication of the book's own content. It was not formatted for function, but for concept.

The volume is over 1000 pages yet uses a distinctly vertical format to feel like a book from the Napoleon era. The pages curl tremendously towards the center, and the text documents within the book fan out from the binding of the book, for that feel of actually looking through originals. Unfortunately, the information close to the center of the book becomes so curved due to the book's size that the reader has to angle their head or move the book to read (particularly around page 500). The hundreds of sequential photos do not read well across a vertical format; they are just over an inch wide and unclear. Often these images are of etchings from napoleons era, an art form whose beauty resides in the details.

I get the conceptual appeal of the book format. It looks nice on my coffee table. It just needed to be a much bigger book to feel clear, or in another format to properly use.

Instead of focusing on the type of BOOK that was produced in the napoleonic era, it would have been much more pleasurable for the reader, to design the format of the book around the FILM Stanley Kubrick designed. Stanley wasn't going to film Napoleon in the common aspect-ratio of prints and paintings from the Napoleonic era. He was going to film it in the clearest way possible to show us the Napoleonic era itself. Sweeping vistas of armies, their patterns of war, and the european countryside might have been just as central a tenet to this film as Napoleon himself. Despite having excellent content, Castle's take on Napoleon doesn't give us enough room to properly enjoy it.