Napoleon ***** (1927, Albert Dieudonné, Vladimir Roudenko, Edmond Van Daële) – Classic Movie Review 7,016

Writer-director Abel Gance’s astonishing great French 1927 silent epic biopic of the young Napoleon Bonaparte (Albert Dieudonné), with a fine, powerful, commanding central performance and several outstanding sequences, is filmed with enormous style and energy for three screens, which come together at the end in the last sections of the film, when three images are combined across the screen.

Its incredible original length of 330 minutes led to much cutting, including the director’s own 1934 sound version (140 minutes), but it was restored by Kevin Brownlow in 1981 to widespread praise in a version running 235 minutes. The 2000 restoration is the version of 330 minutes.

It is shot in Black and White but tinted in some sequences. In Britain the 1981 restoration was accompanied by a Carl Davis score and in America by Carmine Coppola’s. Satisfyingly, this became one of the most popular releases of a silent film restoration, grossing $10,000,000, in America.

The director Abel Gance plays Louis Saint-Just. Also in the cast are Vladimir Roudenko (Napoleon as a child), Gina Manès (as Joséphine de Beauharnais), Nicolas Koline (as Tristan Fleuri), Alexandre Koubitzky (as Georges-Jacques Danton), Antonin Artaud (as Jean-Paul Marat), Edmond Van Daële (as Maximilien Robespierre), Suzanne Bianchetti (as Queen Marie-Antoinette), Marguerite Gance (as Charlotte Corday), Yvette Dieudonné (as Élisa Bonaparte) and Pierre Batcheff (as General Lazare Hoche).

Napoleon is directed by Abel Gance, runs 330 minutes, is produced by Ciné France, Films Abel Gance, Isepa-Wengeroff Film, Pathé Consortium Cinéma, Société Westi and Société Générale des Films, is released by  Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn (France) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (US), is written by Abel Gance and is shot in Black and White by Jules Kruger.

It was released in the UK by BFI Video on DVD and Blu-ray in 2016.

American-born composer and conductor Carl Davis won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music for the triumphant 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Woman. He became the number one choice for new scores to silent films after his music for the restored Napoléon (1927) and D W Griffith’s Intolerance (1916). He died from a brain haemorrhage in Oxford, on 3 August 2023, aged 86.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,016

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