Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (1927)'s comments

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scaphane

Epic. Especially the triptych ending. Can't wait for the sequel.

12 years 1 month ago

Watched the Coppola edition which is 4 hours.The editing, cinematography, color, acting and music are all fantastic.

The double exposure shots with Napoleon at sea and the crowds moving in the waves was breathtaking!

8 years 4 months ago

Marazmatique

Kind of them to throw some surprise titties in after 4 hours of politics and warfare.

2 years 7 months ago

Buksemannen

Watched the 332 minute version. Act III is incredibly slow, and ruins the great build up in the first two act's in my opinion.

4 years 8 months ago

marienbad

it was designed to be projected on three screens like a triptych. It could never be viewed on a DVD or with television screens it has to be presented with three projectors and three screens. It's only been properly shown in the US fewer than half a dozen times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napol%C3%A9on_%281927_film%29

12 years 5 months ago

Namfoodle

ACT III was the only weaker one (the romance subplot), other than that it's really amazing.

5 years 8 months ago

gerryt

Great cinamatography for that era. Sometimes the camera as observer watching the crowd from a steady platform, sometimes as part of the crowd and moving as a person. Ahead of its' time

13 years ago

Typically Thomas

In case you're wondering, like I did, why this movie is so hard to find, given it is so old and you might assume it's in the public domain, let me clear it up. This being a French film the copyright expires 70 years after the death of the creator, and Abel Gance died in 1981, so this film will not be public domain until 2051.

1 month ago

interpol28

What a great actor, the guy who played Napoleon.

14 years 4 months ago

Dieguito

Good but too long..

12 years 3 months ago

Torgo

I've rarely seen a heavier assault of 1-bombing on IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018192/ratings

Looks like it had a rating of 8.7 (!) not too long ago. Such a thing hitting the Top 250 would certainly upset some fake-voting imbeciles.

Have to see it yet - I'm not a fan of Napoléon as a historical figure and don't know when to try a 5-hour-silent-film in one sitting. :|

12 years 3 months ago

Knaldskalle

Just bought tickets for it. I'm all giddy with excitement!

12 years 9 months ago

worstmovies

This is being screened in the US for the first time in decades in the newest restored version. Carl Davis conducting his musical score live, triptych ending properly projected. No further US dates planned.

Tickets available now. Hell of an opportunity.
http://www.silentfilm.org/event-special.php

12 years 9 months ago

locovoco

Surprisingly a 4 hour silent movie with virtually no plot, no love interests, and no mystery did not come up SHORT of my expectations.....oh god, couldn't resist.....

8 years 3 months ago

Torgo

I hope to be excused, but having seen the Brownlow restauration at an exhausting 313 minutes (and not in the best picture quality at all), I couldn't resist to imagine that a cut of roughly 3 1/2 hours wouldn't come off as necessarily butchered to me, but rather appropriate. To think Gance had 5 or 6 of these films in such proportions in mind seems really quite overblown. (Which doesn't mean I don't acknowledge some of the spectacular scenes and overall qualities of the movie; it's just too long!)

Now I don't know how bad the soundtrack and editing of the Coppola cut really is; but I'd sure prefer a BluRay transfer of this over the circulating Brownlow rip, which doesn't do the epic scale of this project any justice. And I'm not even talking about the triptych here ..

9 years 4 months ago