In a nutshell, the entire movie is a montage interconnecting Napoleon's love life with his feats of battle and alternating between the two. His stance may leave some dubious, but it is at least a simple one. Unlike Kubrick, however, Scott was unable to find the flaw in Napoleon's armor and clearly struggled to get to grips with his hero. So there's little surprise to see him tackling, like the Duke of Wellington in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, the white whale that is Napoleon. The director of Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) – his two best films to date – has developed over the years a fondness for historical headliners, from Christopher Columbus ( 1492: Conquest of Paradise, 1992) to the Gucci family ( House of Gucci, 2021), the emperor Commodus ( Gladiator, 2000) and the prophet Moses ( Exodus. The other is the ghost of a film that Stanley Kubrick, the Napoleon of cinema, dreamed of making in the 1960s (180-page script, 17,000 photos.) before Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put a stop to his expensive campaign.Īnd then there's Ridley Scott's film, which comes as no mere coincidence.
The real one is Abel Gance's 1927 massive film, a romantic and lyrical masterpiece that was reshuffled over time into some 20 different versions and about which we should gain a better understanding in June 2024 after a 15-year restoration process. When it comes to cinema, two myths loom large.
