Napoléon (Abel Gance, 1927)

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Revelator
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#176 Post by Revelator » Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:03 pm

gcgiles1dollarbin wrote:Lots of ham-fisted symbolism, Josephine's face on a globe, the eagle's shadow, the entire fucking eagle spread across the famous triptych.
It's definitely hamfisted on paper, or merely spoken of, but onscreen the images, against all odds, have great power and overwhelming beauty. I suppose that's Gance's secret weapon, his ability to dare corny ideas into awesome pictures. The entire fucking eagle had thousands of people gasping at once (the orchestra helped of course), perhaps at the sight of the motif reaching such an incredible apotheosis. I was less taken with the Violine scenes and the battle of Toulon, which was overlong and incoherent at times.
but, man, what a fascist portrait!
It's certainly tempting to describe Napoleon as a fascist/proto-fascist film. Norman King's fine book on Gance convincingly make a case that the film is more of an "romantic elitist" portrait, albeit with plenty of reactionary appeal. In any case, Gance had intended to darken his portrait in the future planned films. The one he did make, the much underrated Austerlitz, depicts Napoleon's greatest victory but also portrays a more fallible Napoleon, one tempted by absolutism and prone to temper tantrums and rages, influenced for the worse by his family, mistress, and Talleyrand; no longer the man of the destiny from the earlier film.

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#177 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Fri Apr 13, 2012 10:59 pm

Revelator wrote:
gcgiles1dollarbin wrote:Lots of ham-fisted symbolism, Josephine's face on a globe, the eagle's shadow, the entire fucking eagle spread across the famous triptych.
It's definitely hamfisted on paper, or merely spoken of, but onscreen the images, against all odds, have great power and overwhelming beauty. I suppose that's Gance's secret weapon, his ability to dare corny ideas into awesome pictures. The entire fucking eagle had thousands of people gasping at once (the orchestra helped of course), perhaps at the sight of the motif reaching such an incredible apotheosis. I was less taken with the Violine scenes and the battle of Toulon, which was overlong and incoherent at times.
Yes, you could say that an image writ large is a visual pleasure: spectacle as magnification. I certainly enjoyed the spectacle at the time, and if a film's strength is tantamount to a fireworks display, then, yes, the gasping audience validates this experience. Given the rarity of this event, and the heroic efforts taken to present the film, I think criticism of the content is considered perverse, but I still marvel at the broadness of the symbolism, the "fatherland" references, and the celebration of martial order (the triptych's flanking columns of soldiers framing the face of Napoleon). At the same time, I hope you haven't overlooked the many things in my original post that paid tribute to the film's innovations.
Revelator wrote:
gcgiles1dollarbin wrote:but, man, what a fascist portrait!
It's certainly tempting to describe Napoleon as a fascist/proto-fascist film. Norman King's fine book on Gance convincingly make a case that the film is more of an "romantic elitist" portrait, albeit with plenty of reactionary appeal. In any case, Gance had intended to darken his portrait in the future planned films. The one he did make, the much underrated Austerlitz, depicts Napoleon's greatest victory but also portrays a more fallible Napoleon, one tempted by absolutism and prone to temper tantrums and rages, influenced for the worse by his family, mistress, and Talleyrand; no longer the man of the destiny from the earlier film.
Hmmm... "romantic elitist." Are we talking Promethean anti-hero? I don't think Napoleon, as portrayed in the film, is an individualist in that sense--he's always doing things on behalf of his conception of "France"--but I'd be interested to read King's book to find out more about this; thank you for the reference. I would also like to see Austerlitz based on your recommendation, although it is difficult to think of a 1960 film as an appendix to a 1927 film, even if the same director is responsible. I do realize he intended to continue his portrait, and it's unfortunate he didn't have the chance. Having seen only La roue and Un grand amour de Beethoven in addition to Napoleon, I have discovered that my tolerance for recurring symbolism fares better in the context of stories not meant to exalt nationalism; e.g., "The Rose of the Rail" motif in the former film, while excessive, was juxtaposed nicely against other imagery: the wrecked train engine, the cross, etc. Complications like these interest me more.

goalieboy82
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#178 Post by goalieboy82 » Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:38 pm

any kind of news on the napoleon front (dvd, future showing in the US). also what lost footage did they find a few months ago (read about it in a newspaper).

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La Clé du Ciel
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#179 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Wed May 09, 2012 5:10 pm

Firstly: major news about NAPOLEON has been announced in FIAF’s Journal of Film Preservation (No. 86, April 2012 issue). More news of the news will follow…

Secondly: the US screenings!

I posted something on nitrateville the other week – my sincere apologies for not doing so here sooner, and my further apologies for posting much of the same material. I’m hugely excited that people can now have actual conversations about the film as a cinematic experience! I was intrigued by many reactions, so I thought I would respond to a few ideas…

Firstly, I think that the ahistorical accusation of “fascism” does great injustice – not just to Gance’s film, but also to Napoleon himself. In the nineteenth-century, Napoleon and the Revolution were dangerously liberal – that’s the reason the rest of Europe fought so hard to defeat them. After all, Napoleon was the enemy of a Europe entirely dominated by absolute monarchies, autocratic dukedoms, and an empire that was still a feudal state based on serfdom (Russia). He was officially declared the Antichrist by the Orthodox Church in Russia, but later compared to Christ by many in the Polish independence movement (the Polish national anthem is still the only such hymn to mention Napoleon by name), as well as by French writers (from the lunatic fringe of mystic socialists to more established figures like de Nerval). Early 19th century nationalism was not associated with the right, but was the key characteristic of liberalism (it would later be hijacked by people like Bismarck in an effort to subsume its socialist roots). Hence, even in Britain people like Coleridge and Byron admired the French Revolution and Napoleon as beacons for social change. Napoleon was an enemy of the empires of Austria-Hungary (which dominated Italy and suppressed independence from its various national groups) and Russia (which dominated eastern Europe and brutally suppressed Polish resistance). The Napoleonic Code is still the basis of much civil law in Europe and present in other nations across the world (Napoleon said this would be his most important legacy). In the 20th century, right-wing groups/figures very rarely mentioned Napoleon as a point of positive reference and the extreme left were the same. In the 1920s, Gance got hostile reviews from both the extreme right- and left-wing press. NAPOLEON was accused by the left of being fascist and condemned by the right for being financed by foreign (German and Russian) money. The fact that many believed Gance to be Jewish (which may have been at least half true) meant he was the subject of some virulent anti-Semitic attacks by French fascists in the 1930s.

Elie Faure’s book on Napoleon (published in 1921) was a key influence on Gance’s film. Faure saw Napoleon as both Christ and Antichrist – source of darkness and light. This is an interpretation that permeates Gance’s film. As many people have already pointed out, NAPOLEON was meant to be the first of six films. Gance wrote that his first film showed only a partial portrait – the tragic destiny is clearly set up in NAPOLEON, but remains unfulfilled. Yet even within the film there is a far, far more complex treatment of Napoleon than many people give credit. Yes, Napoleon is given a halo and is associated with light (sunsets, fire/flame), but there are also numerous instances of his darkness (his silhouette cast on the snow in the snowfight, against the sunset on Corsica, over the “Rights of Man” tablet in the Convention, Violine marrying his shadow etc.). Gance’s portrait is far from simplistic or conventional – it’s deeply ambiguous. Just look at Napoleon’s romance with and marriage of Josephine. It is treated as comedy in many places, but there is also an unsettling ambivalence about Napoleon’s attitude to Josephine and the idea of power/desire/control itself (she looks positively frightened during some of the wedding scenes – and the superimposition of her face on the globe is wonderfully double-edged).

In the Ghosts of the Convention sequence, Napoleon says his ideal is the “Universal Republic” – essentially a proto-European Union. Gance’s Napoleon is not nationalist, he is internationalist. Equally, the French Revolution is seen as a world movement, not a national one. Also, what about Saint-Just’s threat? He warns Napoleon that the Revolution “will turn ferociously against you” if he betrays them. Saint-Just asks Napoleon if he will keep his promise. After a series of close-ups of Napoleon saying “Yes!” to various other questions from Danton/Robespierre/Marat, the close-up after Saint-Just’s question elicits no answer – Napoleon just stands there. This is hugely significant. The scene is setting up Napoleon as a betrayer of the promise we have just witnessed him making. And the fact that the character who issues this threat is played by the film’s director in person makes its importance even more obvious. Here is the author threatening his own character! And, what’s more, we know what will happen. Our historical knowledge of Napoleon’s ultimate (political) compromise and (military) defeat forms the current of dramatic irony throughout the whole film.

From the very opening, we are shown the child’s destiny. In our first glimpse of Napoleon, we only see his hat – we are teased with an already iconographic image that the character has yet to attain. In the screenplay, Gance describes the hat rising above the snow parapet as “a black sun” – a perfect encapsulation of the idea of Napoleon as an oxymoronic force of darkness and light. I think the geography lesson offer perhaps the most poignant moment in the whole film – when the child is shown his death, in the form of the drawing of Saint-Helena. The mournful revelation of his destiny, followed by that gorgeous slow dissolve to white, is an incredibly beautiful (and very haunting) moment. That Napoleon becomes less human as the film goes on is a common criticism – but this is very much the point. As he fulfils his historical destiny, he becomes more isolated from human contact.

Then there’s the Fleuri family. In the original synopsis of all six films (written in 1923), the Fleuris are of equal importance (in terms of narrative and presumed screen time) to Napoleon. Though many of their scenes in the single extant film remain lost, they are still a significant presence in NAPOLEON. Something no one seems to mention is how badly Napoleon treats the Fleuris – and what this says about the ironic undercurrent Gance creates during Napoleon’s rise to power. In all the tens of thousands of feet of celluloid across NAPOLEON’s many hours, Tristan makes physical contact with Napoleon in only two frames – a fraction of one second. This is when the young Napoleon thanks him during the snowfight – they briefly touch hands before Napoleon runs off, leaving Tristan staring off-screen for a couple of seconds before the sequence cuts back to the fight. At night, Tristan places a coat on the crying Napoleon, who is alone outside on the gun carriage – yet he is too shy even to make physical contact with the child himself (he places the coat on him and backs away). When Napoleon is an adult, Tristan spends numerous fruitless attempts to get Napoleon to acknowledge his existence – every time he is either unseen (outside Napoleon’s house in the cheering crowd) or brutally rebuffed (the inn at Toulon, as well as in an additional scene in the single-screen ending where his rejection is even more upsetting).

Whilst many might prefer shorter versions of NAPOLEON, cutting the film down eliminates the characters with whom we are meant to sympathize. I absolutely understand why people have problems with the Fleuris, but I think they are a really interesting example of Gance complicating the narrative of his “great man” by showing us the “little man” of history. Violine hurls her love at Napoleon, but is never noticed. Tristan endlessly tries to get the great man to speak to him, but he is never noticed. Most critics seem to ignore the fact that Gance deliberately creates a level of distance between the “ordinary people” and their leader. Napoleon becomes more isolated from human contact – this sets-up his tragic fall and his failure in (unmade) later films.

Only one other screenplay for the series was completed in the 1920s – this was the final episode, SAINTE-HÉLÈNE (1927-8). It’s a wonderful script, very different in scale from NAPOLEON. Napoleon himself is alone and battles with the petty realities of daily life, tortured by the memory of his former power. His death at the film’s finale (which is a quite magnificently weird and beautiful sequence in the screenplay) shows Napoleon’s spiritual legacy reaching out to future ages. For Gance, Napoleon’s ultimate importance was the fact that he tried to overcome the social/political limitations of his age. The point and purpose of Gance’s film is enthusiasm. It’s not a nationalist/fascist monument to a dictator; it offers a celebration of potential for individual and collective change. The call for a united Europe in 1927 must be seen not anachronistically as some sort of prediction of WWII, but in context as a call for unity after the fratricide of WWI. After NAPOLEON, Gance’s next project (before he embarked on the disastrous LA FIN DU MONDE) was to be a cinematic wing of the League of Nations. This was to be an organization that helped research and promote films dedicated to creating “world cinema” and resolving international conflict through cinematic multiculturism. Gance was most certainly not a chauvinistic nationalist, nor a militarist. (In NAPOLEON, the Battle of Toulon is filled with remarkably savage imagery and clearly doesn’t hide from the realities of warfare.)

People’s reaction to the US screenings is ample proof that NAPOLEON can evoke tremendous emotion from its audience. It makes you want to go out and change the world – I find it an immensely positive and profoundly uplifting work of art.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#180 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed May 09, 2012 5:22 pm

Nice to see you back as always, La cle' . . .

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La Clé du Ciel
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#181 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Wed May 09, 2012 5:41 pm

HerrSchreck, thank you – I can only apologize for being absent for so long.

As promised, here is the major news: http://www.fiafnet.org/uk/publications/jfp/86.html (the first link on that page is an introduction to the main article, the second is the article itself)

The salient points of the article by Georges Mourier:

1) For the last few years, the Cinémathèque française have been cataloguing every single version of NAPOLEON that survives, from 1927 up to Brownlow’s (near-)latest restoration.
2) Large amounts of newly (re-)discovered print and documentary material has been found and used to aid the detective work.
3) A major new restoration of NAPOLEON is being undertaken with the aim of creating both the (short) Opéra version and the (long) Apollo version.

It’s quite staggeringly excellent news, public at long last. I can understand it being kept under-wraps for several years, especially when various legal issues (no names mentioned) and mistakes seem to have dogged the project (what else would we expect with NAPOLEON?). In particular, I would highlight this passage, relating how the initial research/cataloguing process was nearing completion when someone spotted an error:
in January 2009, as we were preparing to finish our report, we discovered that one bizarre number [in the catalogue of print material] actually represented a set of 179 cans… Thus, only six days before the date we were scheduled to submit our final report, 381 boxes that hadn’t been opened since 1971 suddenly reappeared!
D’oh! How do you misplace 381 boxes of material?! No wonder it’s taken years to announce the start of restoration…

Let joy be unrestrained! Now we wait… but I bet the intervening years between now and a cinematic/dvd/bluray release will just fly right by!

[sound of time passing]

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#182 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Wed May 09, 2012 8:01 pm

@La Clé du Ciel: Thank you for such a lavish and learned response to my comments! While I am not accusing Napoleon himself of being fascist (and thus, I hope, can avoid the fallacy of ahistoricism), I do still believe that Gance’s portrait is deeply invested in the celebration of militaristic power, imperial ventures, and totalitarianism formed under the rubric of one particular nation-state (in this case, the “fatherland” of France)—this is as good a definition of fascism as any. Perhaps Gance had a vision of complicating this portrait in future films, and perhaps he is more a victim of anti-Semitism and overzealous accusations of propagandizing for the extreme right, but it hardly surprises me that the film was mistaken for a fascist screed, because so much of what he juxtaposes and symbolizes comes off that way.
I will say that selective close readings can at first seem to soften the image of Napoleon as a militarized instrument of the nation-state. One could argue, for example, that the snowball fight was a means by which war is critiqued through trivialization and infantilization, or that Josephine’s face exposed on the globe suggests a sublimation of sexual desire into world conquest (which, I’m guessing, is where you’re going with the “double-edged” remark). But all of these anomalous moments are decisively resolved by the final movement into an unambiguous celebration of conquest, militarism, and paternal nationalism. I don’t think it’s incidental that this is also the moment when the pyrotechnics of film technology are foregrounded: the triptych of screens and the tricolore tinting. This strikes me as a kind of Futurist fetish for technological advance, linking them to political violence and military triumph.
When you write,
La Clé du Ciel wrote:Napoleon becomes more isolated from human contact – this sets-up his tragic fall and his failure in (unmade) later films,
You could just as easily say, if one limits the analysis to the film itself, that this distance transforms him into a tidy fascist allegory, an aloof figurehead who forfeits personal identity for the sake of imperial France.
At any rate, given my interpretation of what has survived (i.e., not unrealized plans for future films), I’m not sure I would want anyone to “change the world,” as you put it, under the terms presented by Gance; I would be too afraid of summary execution!
And yet, having said all that, I don’t want to be disrespectful to a person who clearly knows far more about the filmmaker than I will probably ever know, so let me add that I am nonetheless grateful for the wealth of information and deep contextualization that you have provided. I realize that intentions are always more complicated than what they produce.

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La Clé du Ciel
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#183 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Fri May 11, 2012 8:44 pm

gcgiles1dollarbin, I am immensely happy to be able to have this conversation! I love that NAPOLEON is a source of interpretive debate again, not simply the locus of endlessly frustrating news about not being able to see the thing.

I completely understand where you’re coming from – it’s a film that does make some people feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, to respond to a few of your comments…
Gance’s portrait is deeply invested in the celebration of militaristic power, imperial ventures, and totalitarianism formed under the rubric of one particular nation-state (in this case, the “fatherland” of France)—this is as good a definition of fascism as any.
The ultimate goal of Napoleon, as explicitly stated in the film in the Ghosts of the Convention sequence, is the Universal Republic – borderless, and ultimately nationless. The whole point of the French Revolution was, for the great liberals of the nineteenth century (of whom Gance might well be said to be the last), that it put an end to the patriarchal institutions of monarchy and feudalism. The great communal chorus of the Marseillaise sequence is the film’s great expression of universality. At its climax, the editing melds a hundred faces of men, women, and children into a single visual voice. Behind Danton, the headless statue of Christ opens its arms as the wind flutters and lifts the tricolour and the sunlight bursts into the hall. The specifically cinematic qualities of such aesthetic unity works hand-in-hand with the film’s theme of unity. The symbolism of the wind, the light, the crucifix, and the tricolour were meant to universalize this message. For the German release of NAPOLEON, Gance wrote letters to the executives of UFA, begging them to ensure that the Marseillaise was played in theatres. He stated his (sincere) belief that the Marseillaise wasn’t a French (national) hymn, but a symbol of universal (international) revolution. You may disagree, but that’s what he believed – and it is evidence that you really can take the film in that sense. (Worth noting, too, that in the background to the scene when we see the adult Napoleon for the first time is a statue draped in the American flag. Gance was going to have included Washington as a figure in the US version, blessing the spreading of the Revolution through Europe.)

Napoleon points out, “for posterity”, that the revolution of the future will be fought without cannon and bayonets. The point of SAINTE-HELENE (and I know it’s not much fun to point to non-existent films as evidence, but it’s still important to know) was that Napoleon must transcend his historical and physical limitations to spread his spiritual legacy. There was to be a montage of great writers being inspired to create their own literary and philosophical revolutions by Napoleon’s legacy. As Chateaubriand said (and Gance quotes at the start of his SAINTE-HELENE screenplay): “Alive, Napoleon lost the world; dead, he conquered it”. The point of Napoleon, for Gance, was that he symbolized the spirit of transcendence – of man going beyond himself and inspiring others to do the same. This has nothing to do with imperial conquest, but moral/spiritual inspiration.

Coming back to Josephine, I think her romance with Napoleon is fascinating (and wonderfully ambivalent) material. It’s also very historically accurate (for all Gance’s metaphorical language, NAPOLEON is packed with precise historical details). Josephine’s involvement with figures of power and influence (we see her with Barras, then Hoche, then Napoleon, then Barras again, then she settles with Napoleon) is very interesting. Her backstage negotiations with Barras to promote Napoleon are a clear example of Napoleon’s fate and rise to power being out of his own control – Josephine enables him to take command of the Army of Italy. Her friends, both in reality and in the film, (Mme Tallien and Barras – in whose company Josephine appears the first time we see her in NAPOLEON) maintain dreadful reputations for financial/political/moral corruption. The Victims’ Ball is a fantastic glimpse of a world to which Napoleon is entirely alien – it’s a glorious sequence, but deliciously sadistic (it’s actually quite tame compared to some of the amazingly tasteless things done in 1794-5).

Equally, I see Violine as an interesting parallel to Napoleon. Just as Napoleon keeps the roses Josephine throws in the street outside the palmist, so Violine keeps gloves/feathers that Napoleon loses throughout the film. In their idealized obsession, both Napoleon and Violine are unequal to the objects of their affection. Violine’s idealized love for Napoleon is rather disturbing – I know it isn’t always easy to understand or sympathize with her. In the 1923 outline, she goes unnoticed until she dies in the retreat from Russia in 1812. In NAPOLEON itself, she ends up worshipping iconography – a cheap statue, a shadow, an increasingly distant (geographically and emotionally) figurehead – rather than a man. Equally, when Napoleon escapes the admiring crowds by getting his friend to dress as him and distract the public, Tristan is left cheering the fake Napoleon – not his hero, but a substitute for him. It’s a really neat instance of demonstrating how the real Napoleon is being lost and replaced by a series of images and imitations.

As you predicted, I do indeed place great significance in Josephine’s face being superimposed on the globe. Aside from the huge weight Gance placed on the visual symbol wheel to represent the eternal cycle of destiny (which occupies every aspect of LA ROUE), I think the discordant possibility that NAPOLEON confuses love and conquest is made quite explicit throughout the scenes set in the army’s camp. (All those rather weird and disturbing letters he writes to Josephine seem very significant.)
But all of these anomalous moments are decisively resolved by the final movement into an unambiguous celebration of conquest, militarism, and paternal nationalism
This is very interesting. NAPOLEON is often criticized for being incoherent – it’s quite nice to hear it being found so conclusive! On this issue, I don’t think anything is quite that resolved at the end of NAPOLEON. The final minutes sum up everything we’ve seen and hurls at us just about every image and every symbol we’ve encountered. As with every instance of visual welding Gance undertakes (frame-by-frame in montage, or image-over-image in superimposition), images are cemented together without ever quite being (thematically) resolved.

As I said before, ambiguity and antithesis is very apparent in NAPOLEON. At its end, Gance actually compares his secular saint to Satan. In a paraphrase of the famous passage in the Book of Matthew, the intertitle reads: “And now, turning towards Italy, the tempter showed the Promised Land to which he would lead them.” It’s a wonderfully perverse thing to say of your hero at the end of your film (which starts with the child rising, antithetically, like a “black sun” amid the snow). The only thing we’ve been made sure of from the very beginning of the film is that Napoleon is destined to die alone on “a little island, lost in the ocean”. The final minutes are incredibly open-ended. After all, NAPOLEON concludes on a moment of suspense – everything lies before us, waiting for us to step forward and embrace it. The general’s career is only just beginning, cinema’s “new language” of triptych Polyvision is only just beginning.

Part of the reason for the triptych being there at all is because Gance didn’t know how to end his film on a moment of transition without leaving the audience on a high. The original 1924-5 script(s) all end the first part of the cycle later in the Italian Campaign, after several victories. By the time Gance ran out of time and money, he couldn’t finish the scripted version. The triptych is, in one sense, a quite extraordinarily brilliant improvisation. The fact that the film leaves us in a state of excitement for the future is at the heart of its emotive impact. Its power resides in the fact that we are being offered a vision of the future – of the Revolution spreading into Europe, of cinema spreading its wings into Polyvision. It’s a most gloriously fulfilling irresolution!

If nothing else, the sheer unalloyed joy of such incredible filmmaking is surely the most striking aspect of NAPOLEON to take away from the cinema. (With the almighty boom from Carl Davis’ score beneath the images, I find the moment when the eagle finally stretches out its wings across all three screens to be one of the most gloriously moving in anything I have ever seen.) The final minutes are, as you say, the ne plus ultra of technical achievement and visual splendour. Gance is saying “Look what cinema can do!” As he later wrote of his plans for LA FIN DU MONDE, NAPOLEON “opens its arms of imagery to the world”.

I honestly don’t think that guilt or uneasiness is anything that someone would inevitably take away with them from NAPOLEON. It’s certainly not the only way of looking at it. Alas, I don’t think there’s anything I can say to make someone like the film if it’s not to their taste. I can only highlight what I feel is the immensely positive message of the film and the kinds of ideas its maker wanted to express.
At any rate, given my interpretation of what has survived (i.e., not unrealized plans for future films), I’m not sure I would want anyone to “change the world,” as you put it, under the terms presented by Gance; I would be too afraid of summary execution!
NAPOLEON isn’t asking its audience vote for a specific party or person in 1927 (Napoleon is a historical figure), it isn’t asking anyone to invade another country (warfare is portrayed in the most brutal terms), it isn’t inciting anyone to violence (ditto) – the point of the film (and, for Gance, of cinema itself) is to generate enthusiasm. Not enthusiasm directed towards a particularly definable goal, but simply the enthusiasm to change. It isn’t asking you to conform, simply to take inspiration. To put it in absurdly inadequate terms, I feel genuinely unthreatened by this film (I should say that I don’t really find any form of cinema threatening). When I say NAPOLEON makes me want to change the world, I really do mean that. I don’t mean I want to buy a pair of size 11 jackboots and annex my neighbour, I mean that I want to go out into the world and do something – create something, make a difference. That’s what I take from the film.

Eesh… well, I apologize for rattling on for some time – I hope I haven’t sounded too pompous or polemical. If I keep talking, it’s because it’s so rare I get the chance to have such a stimulating discussion :)

Plus, in the time it’s taken for me to write this, we’ve all moved a little closer to seeing a new restoration of NAPOLEON.

[sound of additional time passing]

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#184 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Sat May 12, 2012 1:07 am

Fantastic! I am definitely treating the film like a closed system, which is not appropriate. Given my ignorance of the context, I can only concede, misgivings or not. It's fascinating to read about Gance's notion of the Universal Republic; I immediately thought of young Napoleon's Corsican pride (when it was challenged by the school teacher's mockery) transformed over time into the adult's instinct to protect the island from the British by subsuming his homeland under French protection (I think it was at this point that the "fatherland" reference turned up, unless I'm misremembering). Does the vision of the Universal Republic accommodate the tensions between a region's sovereignty and the perceived threat to the republic of balkanization? Didn't Corsica lose its independence the year Napoleon was born (which perhaps is the inspiration for the bad blood between teacher and student)? I often wonder if the historical Napoleon had any public attitude toward the status of his birthplace. Anyhow, thanks again for being so generous with your knowledge on the subject. Cheers...

goalieboy82
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#185 Post by goalieboy82 » Tue May 15, 2012 5:38 pm

lets hope there will be a dvd/blu ray release soon as they can one out.
i know i would get a copy the day it comes out.

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La Clé du Ciel
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#186 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Thu May 31, 2012 4:47 pm

[Traditional apologies for another long delay in response.]

gcgiles1dollarbin, I’m glad I could be of help :)

Yes, Corsica had quite a complex history of regime-changes in the eighteenth century. I think Napoleon viewed that the island’s “independence” was better realized through assimilation into a French Republic than being a colony of the British Empire or any other monarchical dynasty from the mainland (hence, in NAPOLEON, the outrage that Corsica would ever be British). There’s a great emphasis on Napoleon’s connection to “his country” in the film – especially that beautiful sequence of superimpositions where he rides around Corsica. Gance clearly revelled in the natural beauty of the island – and the emphasis on Napoleon’s connection to islands and exile is a big theme. (Judging from the script, there’s a fair bit of missing material from the Corsican sequences – but perhaps some more footage has come to light in the material the French (re-)discovered in their vaults.) There are a few “fatherlands” mentioned in the Moulin du Roi Inn, when everyone is arguing over which nation Corsica should ally itself with. Though Napoleon repeats the language of their claims and says their fatherland is France, he goes on to explain that “France is the mother of us all”. France’s Revolution belongs to the world – hence the insistence that other fledgling nations will find their true by following Napoleon towards the Universal Republic. For Gance, as it had been for Victor Hugo and other nineteenth-century idealists, the Revolution was the greatest advance humanity had taken since Christ. Indeed, Gance wrote: “My Bonaparte remains in the great line of idealist republicans of whom Christ was the first”. Napoleon becomes a kind of secular Christ (or at least has the potential to be so).

As for the precise nature of a Universal Republic, Gance’s next completed film, LA FIN DU MONDE, contains the fulfilment of Napoleon’s unrealized dream. At its climax, Martial Novalic assembles a League of Nations-style international council and all the world leaders proclaim their allegiance to a Universal Republic. The exact political structure of this Republic is obviously rather vague. Essentially, it seems to be a series of continent-sized federal states whose basis is the ideals of the French Revolution. The 1894 Camille Flammarion novel (of the same name) on which Gance based his scenario starts in the twenty-fourth century and a universal system of laws, scientific systems, and governance has already been established. I think the sheer improbability of this ever happening (and the historical knowledge that it never has, neither for Napoleon nor anyone else) inspired Gance to pursue science-fiction rather than history. If utopia has always evaded even the most promising visionaries in the past, you have to chase it and pin it down where it can't escape - at the end of the world!

goalieboy82, you are not alone.

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Faux Hulot
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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#187 Post by Faux Hulot » Thu May 31, 2012 11:51 pm

La Clé du Ciel wrote:As promised, here is the major news: http://www.fiafnet.org/uk/publications/jfp/86.html (the first link on that page is an introduction to the main article, the second is the article itself)
Sadly the link appears to be broken -- can you possibly post the correct one?

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#188 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:12 am

Faux Hulot, I’m afraid they seem to have taken down not only the cover page, but also the two articles linked through it as well. The FIAF site it is from has links to all their previous issues of the Journal of Film Preservation, but they haven’t got one up for their latest (the original French article referenced the correct page, which is not yet linked through the website itself).

If you try googling the author of the article (georges mourier) and its title (la comete napoleon), the link to the pdf should be at the top of the results, but it still doesn’t seem to work. However, clicking the “quick view” result on the right seems to bring up a different view of the document (I don’t know if this will work for everyone, but it did for me).

If and when FIAF reorganize their links so the main link works again, I’ll be sure to repost. My apologies for this unexpected break – I am happy to summarize some more details from the original article if people are interested…

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#189 Post by Faux Hulot » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:37 pm

Ah, pity... thank you for the confirmation, I scanned the site in some detail and couldn't find it myself. However the "quick view" suggestion worked -- many thanks for that!

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#190 Post by goalieboy82 » Fri Jun 08, 2012 5:33 pm

anything new on napoleon?

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#191 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:58 pm

La Clé du Ciel wrote:Indeed, Gance wrote: “My Bonaparte remains in the great line of idealist republicans of whom Christ was the first."
Given that Gance's character played Christ in the beginning of La Fin du monde, I'm not sure I want to know how the director imagined his own place in this republic! (You can probably tell that I'm wondering about coercion and capitulation in this vision of the Universal Republic; if France's republic depends on universal participation, then wouldn't this mean that, from the perspective of Bonaparte, the world belongs to the Revolution even more than the Revolution belongs to the world?)
On the other hand, considering that La Fin du monde was eviscerated by producers, perhaps beginning with a passion play isn't too far from the truth!
Going back to Corsica, I was also struck by the frequent assertions of historical accuracy, including intertitles that claim, in so many words, "This was actually said," or, "This is historical record." As I recall, the outside of Napoleon's childhood home was actually used in the Corsica sequence, a real setting affirmed by text on screen. Gance seems to have put a lot of stock in this fidelity to history, and yet much of the film is expressionist, dependent on visions, subjective experience, etc. This occasionally discordant combination intrigued me at the time, and I wonder why Gance insisted on the historical record so much when he seems to use Napoleon as more of a model for leadership in an unrealized vision of world order.
Anyhow, once again, La Clé du Ciel, much obliged for your responses!

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#192 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:47 pm

gcgiles1dollarbin, I think that Napoleon/Gance believed the world needs the Revolution – it being the most important event “since the advent of Christ” (to paraphrase Victor Hugo). From a historical perspective, I think the issue in the 1790s was that the world very much didn’t belong to the Revolution. The old order had to be overthrown precisely because it shackled the majority of people to the institutions of monarchy, autocracy, and outright slavery/serfdom. (This clearly had echoes in the post-war world in which Gance made his film – where several old world empires had fallen in the wake of universal war.) I fully agree that (for Gance/Bonaparte/NAPOLEON) there is a sense that the world has a natural instinct/need for the Revolution. There’s a rather wonderful passage I found in the notes for a biopic of Victor Hugo that Gance was planning in 1928-9 that talked about “the revolutionary instinct of our planet” – a kind of universal principle that was fundamental to human progress.

As for Gance, I think he saw himself as more of a John the Baptist than a Christ, though I agree that the opening of LA FIN DU MONDE is rather on-the-nose. (Thankfully, that sequence seems to be one of the few that survives in something like a final montage – I think the lighting and camerawork are really wonderful.) It’s important to remember that both Jean Novalic and Saint-Just are the inspiration for greater things (and greater figures) to come. In NAPOLEON, Saint-Just is happy for his limbs to be “scattered to the four winds” in the belief that “Republics will rise up from them” – he is superseded by Napoleon himself, who he inspires (in spirit form!) to lead the Revolution on to the rest of the world. In LA FIN DU MONDE, Jean Novalic is the inspiration for his brother Martial to be the one who leads the world into a Universal Republic. The original ending of the latter film was to have been Jean recovering from his madness and simply disappearing into the rejoicing crowd as an anonymous figure, whilst his brother is the one helping reorganize the world in the wake of the comet’s passing. Among the many, many, many missing scenes of LA FIN DU MONDE are those in which we see Jean making films to record his message. Gance clearly saw cinema (and his role as filmmaker) as the most important way of changing the world, but he seems to have been happy to play the role of prophet rather than the one who fulfils the prophecy. (A very strange form of modesty!) I think Gance developed a kind of persecution complex during LA FIN DU MONDE, which was the most poisonous production imaginable. All his writing around the time is obsessed with defending himself and cinema from external threats (producers, commercialism, industrial change, comets…). No wonder he put himself on the cross in the opening scene – the sacrificial victim that inspires (but cannot directly lead) world change.

And yes, the blend of documentary accuracy and glaring deviation in NAPOLEON is apparent throughout. Interestingly, historians tend to love the film – only a few film critics seem to get upset about historical details! I think NAPOLEON strikes a constant balance between fact and fantasy – you often have sequences based in very specific evidence, mobilized to achieve a visionary end. Saint-Just’s final speech is rather like the same method Gance uses to make his filmic argument. This speech lists a series of facts and figures about what the Convention has done during the Terror, but Saint-Just caps his oration by transforming all this evidence into a brilliantly memorable metaphor: “is not the Revolution a great beacon lit upon tombs?” Similarly, Gance might set up scenes with lots of intertitles footnoted “Historical”, but then use a series of symbolic leitmotifs/metaphors to form a visual climax to the sequence. The Double Tempest is probably the most brilliant example of this – transforming Napoleon’s (historical) flight across Corsica and the (historical) events in the Convention through a single visual motif: the storm. Both halves of this sequence become both literal and metaphorical spaces, before being welded together in the final superimposed images. It’s a purely (and uniquely) cinematic way of telling history, distilling complex events into a series of powerful images. The closest comparison in historical literature is probably Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, where a staggering amount of primary research is related to the reader through the most extraordinarily imaginative prose, rich with striking imagery and vivid scene-painting. Gance’s film is very much in the same vein – it is history told with the power and vividness of a hallucination. Though we are constantly aware of the dramatic ironies of the events and people we watch, we are also invited to experience history in the present tense – the past is something that is alive, relevant, and emotionally engaging. I agree that the insistence on both accuracy and license is certainly one of the film’s most ambivalent aspects – this tension has lead critics to label the film as both overloaded with historical detail yet also historically false. For Gance (and for most viewers, I imagine) the accuracy of resurrecting the emotions and spirit of an era is far more important than constant factual accuracy.

goalieboy82, it’s likely to be years before we see anything and many, many months before we even hear news of how it’s going. Remember that the Cinémathèque française has spent several years just cataloguing various prints – and have done so without any public announcement. Now that they’ve finally started the restoration process, they will certainly take the same amount of time and effort over it – I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait…

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#193 Post by goalieboy82 » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:50 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2LQ1nepw7s
go to 37:55 into it and watch it for 15 seconds. there is a Napoleon joke.

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#194 Post by Ann Harding » Thu Nov 22, 2012 9:04 am

Napoléon - Le grand classique d'Abel Gance by K. Brownlow is finally coming out on 28th November in French bookshops. This was no small feat as it took me 18 months to find a publisher. This new edition, translated by yours truly, is revised and expanded. You can browse through the book on amazon.fr.

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#195 Post by goalieboy82 » Fri Nov 30, 2012 5:19 pm

any new news on this. i read someplace that the cinematheque is doing somekind of restoration to the film.

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#196 Post by Calvin » Thu Jan 17, 2013 2:25 pm


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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#197 Post by ArchCarrier » Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:17 pm

Great! Any idea when tickets will go on sale?

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#198 Post by Calvin » Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:47 pm

No date or time specified but apparently "soon"

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#199 Post by Drucker » Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:40 pm

If this is to screen anywhere on the east coast of the United States I'll go. Considering that the last word had been no future screenings were planned, hopefully this bodes well.

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Re: Napoleon (Gance, 1927)

#200 Post by kidc85 » Fri Jan 18, 2013 1:59 am

Thanks for the heads up, definitely going to try and get tickets. Does this mean a DVD release might be on the horizon?

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