The premiere of Ridley Scott’s film about Napoleon I features Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, delivering an epic historical drama that follows a successful pairing from 2000’s Gladiator. That earlier collaboration earned five Oscars and helped renew interest in Roman epics after a period dominated by tired peplum trends. Now, more than two centuries of Napoleonic lore influence modern cinema as filmmakers revisit the life, campaigns, and personal battles of the man who rose from obscurity to lead a turbulent era in the French Revolution and eventually crown himself Emperor. Napoleon I stands not as a crown worn by birthright but as a symbol of popular will guiding the state. In contemporary cinema, he remains a dominant figure, rivaling other enduring icons in public imagination.
There are many films about Napoleon, yet few manage to fully capture the military, political, and intimate dimensions of his life. Classic titles are still remembered, such as Abel Gance’s 1927 silent Napoleon, which ends with the Battle of Arcole during the first Italian campaign of 1796. Gance sought to complete the story with additional installments that never materialized. Later productions used sound and linked Napoleon to love stories, campaigns, or dramatic returns from exile, but many focused narrowly on select periods or episodes rather than the emperor’s whole arc. It was not until the late 1960s that a major director from the Soviet Union undertook a broader portrayal of Napoleon, expanding the cinematic approach beyond single battles or moments.
Sergei Bondarchuk adapted Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the screen between 1966 and 1967, against the backdrop of Napoleon’s early dominance in Europe, including the victory at Austerlitz in 1805 and the invasion of Russia. King Vidor’s 1956 adaptation 1812, starring Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, and Vittorio Gassman, ran nearly four hours in its longest versions and became a landmark for its scale, winning major awards and earning critical acclaim. The film’s endurance helped set a benchmark for epic storytelling in cinema, showing how a thorough, multi-part approach could bring a vast historical period to life.
After Sherlock Holmes, Napoleon has become one of the most frequently depicted characters in cinema, surpassing Dracula or Jesus Christ in some lists.
Sergio Bondarchuk not only directed; he also acted, notably portraying Pyotr Bezukhov in a visual tour de force that recreated Moscow’s burning streets and the vast open spaces of the era. The film featured dynamic camera work, practical effects, and thousands of extras from the Soviet armed forces, delivering a convincing sense of scale during the Battle of Borodino. That battle, drawn out in a single intense day, showcased the sunlit dust and fought spirit of a war that drew hundreds of thousands of combatants. Bondarchuk’s meticulous preparation and use of massive crowds set a standard for war cinema at the time. Later, in 1970, Bondarchuk co-produced Waterloo with Dino De Laurentiis, focusing on Napoleon’s fall, Elba’s return, the Hundred Days, and the decisive Battle of Waterloo. Once again, thousands of Soviet soldiers and a notable Western cast—Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, and Orson Welles—joined a production known for its ambitious aerial photography and large-scale battle sequences. The project took years to complete and has since been reevaluated as a monumental work in cinematic history.
Rod Steiger appears as a French soldier in Sergei Bondarchuk’s Waterloo, a still-important image from a film that attempted to capture the full arc of Napoleon’s later years. The production complemented a broader cinematic tradition that treated the Napoleonic era as a canvas for grand storytelling, with massive logistics, period detail, and a sense of historical scope that few other epics could match.
Bondarchuk’s daughter
In a 2011 European Union conference in Brussels, discussions of funding and heritage came together for a moment that linked Waterloo’s battlefield landscape with cultural memory. The area, once protected for urban planning and monuments, later became tied to the memory of those who fled their homelands. By the time of the Russian film festival in Alicante in 2017, Natalia Bondarchuk attended, and audiences learned of her lineage as the daughter of Sergei Bondarchuk, whose War and Peace and Waterloo left a lasting imprint on the genre. The crowd included Russians and Ukrainians who shared a sense of kinship in a period when those ties grew strained by later events. The Bondarchuk family’s origin is traced to the south of Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
Stanley Kubrick’s dream project
Stanley Kubrick, considering a grand film about Napoleon since 1961, prepared a script and scouted locations for a decade. His pursuit required a level of perfection and a budget that rose with every new requirement. Plans would have demanded tens of thousands of extra troops and unprecedented production values. The dream remained unrealized when Kubrick passed away in 1999, leaving behind a lasting sense of what might have been for a definitive Napoleonic epic.
Ian Holm and Jack Nicholson
In the late 1960s, questions about financing and casting surrounded the Napoleonic project, with talks that included Ian Holm and Jack Nicholson for the lead roles and discussions about Marie Josephine’s figure, as well as the fate of a planned adaptation in which Jean Simmons could have played Josefina. The scale and cost made investors wary, and the project paused for years. With Kubrick gone, the hopes for a comprehensive Napoleonic film persisted, breathing life into new conversations about what a modern epic could achieve.
Now Ridley Scott has taken up the mantle, guided by the capabilities of contemporary digital effects. The new film aims to present Napoleon’s life and battles over approximately two hours and thirty-eight minutes, with the working title Kitbag referring to Napoleon’s famous maxim about the soldier’s burden and the humility of merit. The final title, Napoleon, reflects the intent to capture the broad sweep of the emperor’s journey and his era. The production faces the challenge of delivering a global, immersive experience that resonates with audiences in North America and beyond. The premiere in the United States and Spain signals confidence in a project that seeks to redefine Napoleonic cinema.
Postscript: Napoleon was not exceptionally short. Caricatures and guard height led to a popular myth. Autopsy reports have placed his height at about 1.68 to 1.69 meters, while the average height for French men of his time was around 1.55 meters.