The long-awaited Napoleon movie

There is a lot moviesYes, but none of them fully reflect the military, political and personal life of the emperor. There are very famous ones, such as Abel Gance’s famous 1927 black-and-white silent film Napoleon; This film ends with the battle of Arcole at the beginning of the first Italian campaign in 1796, but its author had the idea to complete it. along with other deliveries he later did not make. Later there were other films made with sound by famous actors and directors (Maria Walewska, in 1937, in black and white, with Charles Boyer and Greta Garbo; Désirée, 1954, in color, with Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons) and many more , but so much more. always focused on some war or period, such as Napoleon’s loves, the Russian campaign, or partial aspects, such as Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815 and the Hundred Days. We had to wait until the end of the 60s of the last century for a great director of Soviet cinema to confront Napoleon’s recovery to a large extent, but at least partially.

Sergei Bondarchuk adapted Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace to the cinema in 1966-1967, after a seven-year work, against the backdrop of the beginning of Napoleonic domination in Europe with the victory at Austerlitz in 1805 and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. 1812, which King Vidor made in 1956 with actors of the caliber of Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer and Vittorio Gassman, surpassed the 208-minute North American film version that received three Oscar nominations and won a Golden Globe. , cut into three versions of 401 and 390 minutes and divided into four parts for viewing in theaters (two parts in the United States and Italy), was a complete success and became the top-grossing film. Major film awards of 1968 (the Oscar for best foreign language film, as well as the Golden Globe, National Board Review, and New York Film Critics Circle Award).

In this film, Bondarchuk, who is also a successful actor, played the important role of Pyotr Pierre Bezukhov. It was a spectacular film, with many buildings burned to recreate the Moscow fire, great perspectives of open spaces, mobile ground cameras and others suspended on cables, action of some falling from a 15-meter tower, planes and a helicopter. helicopters and thousands of extras from the Soviet army for high-altitude shooting. Suffice it to say that the Battle of Borodino, in which 275,000 Russians and French fought and was the bloodiest of Napoleon’s campaigns, lasted a single day. several days. Bondarchuk devoted three years to this part of the film, recruiting more extras and extras for troop movements and logistics than the 15,000 for the chariot race scene in Ben-Hur in 1959, when digital effects were not yet available, a record of almost 20,000 (the 120,000 figure circulating on the Internet is incorrect ) has not been compared to any war movie (the film with the most extras is still Gandhi and his funeral, with 300,000, but without expensive military equipment, with basic clothing still). and in a very short scene). Later, in 1970, Bondarchuk directed the Italian-Soviet co-production Waterloo with major producer Dino de Laurentis; It focused on Napoleon’s initial fall, his return from Elba, the Hundred Days Empire, and the decisive battle of Waterloo. Again, thousands of Soviet army soldiers, a famous cast of Western actors such as Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer and Orson Welles, with spectacular aerial shots such as the French cavalry charging into the British infantry squares. The film took three years to make and did not achieve the expected success like Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra in 1963, but time has re-evaluated the fine craftsmanship of both films and Waterloo is a monumental work.

Bondarchuck’s daughter

I remember how, as deputy chairman of the Provincial Council and deputy Treasury, in November 2011, Jaume Pascual, PSOE’s then Provincial Council spokesman, and I were at a European Union conference in Brussels to raise European funds. If it were PP, we moved 20 kilometers to the historical battlefield of Waterloo, the territory of which has protected urban planning and many commemorative monuments, taking advantage of some free time, without imagining that this place would become the famous residence of those who escaped. independence fighter Puigdemont. Currently Deputy State for Culture, on 17 September 2017 the 3rd Volna Russian Film Festival was held at the Santa Bárbara Castle in Alicante; Here, titles and awards, including Image Office technician, were presented. Domingo Rodes County Council. The event was almost suspended due to untimely rain and the gala was very quickly moved to the Felipe II Hall inside the castle so that it could be celebrated. Actress and director Natalia Bondarchuk also attended that premiere, and I asked her if she was the daughter of Sergei Bondarchuk, the great director of War and Peace and Waterloo, and added that I was a big fan of hers. She said he was her father and that he was well remembered in Eastern countries, but she was surprised that anyone here knew who he was. I also remember that Russians and Ukrainians came to those premieres and the week of Russian film screenings sharing an event that they themselves considered common, and it is sad to see what a war of destruction is now going on between these people who until recently were brothers. As cousins ​​when the Union Soviet and then Ukraine became independent. Bondarchuk, of Russian origin, was born in the south of Ukraine during the existence of the Soviet Union.

Since 1961, the great director Stanley Kubrick had been considering a major project to direct and produce the great film about Napoleon that had not yet been made, considering his entire life. He wrote his script that year and spent a decade inventorying locations, palace objects and furniture, buildings, uniforms and clothing in various European countries for each scene he drew, but as he sketched the outline of the film, his Perfectionism led him to escalate the requirements. and pushing the budget much higher, which became astronomical when he started calculating the 30,000 to 40,000 extra troops it would take to make it happen.

Ian Holm and Jack Nicholson

There were doubts about the viability of the film in 1970, when he was about to begin filming after talking to Ian Holm and Jack Nicholson for the main roles, and two recently distributed Bondarchuk films with Jean Simmons rejecting the role of Josefina. either because of the saturation of the Napoleonic theme or because of its high cost and the fear of not being able to win it back at the box office. The fact is that the project was suspended and Kubrick died in 1999 without realizing his dream.

Now another great director, Ridley Scott, has taken over, aided by the sheer perfection of digital effects, and is in a position to make a global and complete film about Napoleon in 2 hours and 38 minutes. battlefields and the life of the emperor. The originally planned title was Kitbag (Soldier’s Backpack); This was a reference to Napoleon’s statement that every soldier carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, glorifying French imperialism and the revolutionary ideal of social equality, stating that it was the soldier’s merit, not his. Aristocratic birth would determine promotions in the army. The last title chosen is Napoleon, which better summarizes the general idea of ​​the film. Ridley Scott has a double responsibility, having made both his own film and the film that Kubrick could not make. I hope the premiere in the United States today and in Spain on Friday will be a success.

Post scriptum: Napoleon was not a short man, as was popularly believed in his time and is popularly believed today, as was propagated through caricatures of his opponents. The reason for this was that the soldiers in his guard were much taller. According to two autopsies performed on him, his height was 1.68 or 1.69 meters, while the average height of French people his age was 1.55 meters.