That was Gance the great filmmaker who thought that film could do everything and who said to Kevin Brownlow: 'For me, the cinema is not just pictures. 'Napoleon' is like one grand musical composition. The Gallic of cabaret singers, Damia, leads French troops into battle personifying 'La Marseillaise'.The National Convention seems to sway and rock as Napoleon makes his escape from Corsica in a storm-tossed sailboat.In this sequence, the frame splits into nine subliminal images as Napoleon watches his men entering Italy, the screen expands on each side to form a breathtaking panorama, then changes into three coordinated views of the scene The child Bonaparte keeps a pet eagle and wins a snow fight while at school in Brienne.Gance needed a figure as emblematic and powerful as 'Napoleon' to fulfill his dream of super cinema The Little Corporal, after all, is a less controversial figure than the Emperor Impressive as it seems, it was conceived as the first of a six-part biography running many hours and tracing the life of Napoleon from childhood to the bitter end in St Helena Fortunately-for Abel Gance who directed and for us-the project was only completed to that moment where Napoleon enters Italy at the head of the French army, and the later and less pleasant aspects of his spectacular career were left unfilmed. Reviewed by Nazi_Fighter_David 8 / 10 Gance needed a figure as powerful as "Napoleon" to fulfill his dream of super cinemaĪbel Gance's 'Napoleon' was premiered on April 7, 1927, at the Paris Opera House, the first movie to be accorded such an honor It was been shown on a triple screen and to full orchestral accompaniment, running slightly under four hours The film's legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens. A massive six-hour biopic of Napoleon, tracing his career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign), his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797 (the film stops there because it was intended to be part one of six, but director Abel Gance never raised the money to make the other five).
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