The World according to Napoleon as seen by Abel Gance BY JAMES GREENBURG Fa m s e h n io o n u at b o ly f G dr e e n s t s le e m d a w n o ’s m Q e u n a r a t n e d r lydecorated the lobby of the Kennedy Center as they often do on a Saturday night. Only this time they were here to see a four-hour silent movie about the life of Napoleon. The twelve day run had been sold-out for weeks and the $25 tickets were one of the hottest items on the cultural circuit. What could make this unlikely crowd turn out for a movie they would pay little attention to at a regular movie house? The presentation had been turned into an event rivaling the grandeur of its 1927 premiere and the man behind it was Francis Ford Coppola. Abel Gance’s Napoleon premiered on April 7,1927 at the Th6atre National de I’Opera in Paris before a wildly appreciative crowd including Charles de Gaulle and Andre Malraux. In six months time, with the advent of sound, Napoleon was a forgotten masterpiece. Unseen in its original form for over fifty years, the reconstruction of the film is a fairy tale worthy of Napoleon himself. Several previous attempts had been made to bring Gance’s chef d’oeurve up to date. The first time was by Gance himself in 1934 when he reedited a shortened version with sound. Years later Gance shot some new material and reassembled it with rediscovered footage and released it as Bonaparte and the Revolution at the 1971 New York Film Festival. Kevin Brownlow, English film historian and devotee of Napoleon since childhood, though Bonaparte and the Revolution a dismal failure. Several years earlier he»had begun the dedicated task of reconstructing the 1927 silent version of Napoleon. Gance gave him access to all his negatives and fine tones and the call went out to film archives around the world. In twelve weeks he had assembled a rough version of the original with the exception of several missing reels and material destroyed by Gance. Even now footage continues to resurface and a French presentation later this year will feature twenty-two minutes of “new” material not seen \ in the American revival. The turning point for Napoleon came at the Telluride Film Festival in September, 1980. Gance, then 90, journeyed from his home in Paris to witness his return from obscurity. The five-and-a-half-hour film (it was projected at silent speed) was shown outdoors utilizing the three-screen technique, Polyvision, that Gance had developed thirty years before cinerama. The showing was a stunning artistic success. En dt i e re r c F to ra r n o c f i s T F h o e r d G C o o d p fa pt o hl e a r . T a h nd e head of Zoetrope Studios was greatly impressed by Gance’s lost work and immediately commissioned his father, Carmine Coppola, to compose a score for the epic. With typical showmanship, Coppola booked Radio City Music Hall in January, 1981 for the triumphant return of Napoleon featuring the new score and a sixty-piece orchestra conducted by his father. Original plans called for a traveling road show in which Maestro Coppola would perform his score with local orchestras. The film played several cities like that before the good intentions ran aground. The logistics of the road show, which may have been feasible during the silent era, proved prohibitively expensive and Zoetrope agreed to a deal with Universal to distribute the film with the new soundtrack prerecorded. For sheer excitement nothing can surpass the experience of watching the conductor’s shadow on the ceiling of a grand hall with thousands of people in attendance. Also gone is the three screen projection at the conclusion of the film. It is now shown in 70 mm from one projector. At the end, the image simply expands to fill the full width of the screen for the famous triptych segment. The recording in Dolby stereo is good but doesn’t begin to approximate the presence of a live orchestra. Some of the glamour of the ‘live’ production has rubbed off on the theatrical release, but the burden of the evening now falls back on the film itself. Fortunately the film is more than a hype. The power and originality of Gance’s vision has aged surprisingly well. Cinematically, Napoleon was years ahead of its time and even today there is nothing quite like it. Si d g u n c if t i i c o a n n t w ly a , s G a e n n c ti e tl ’ e s d o ri N gi a n p a o l le p o ro n Vu Par Abel Gance, (Napoleon Seen By Abel Gance) and it is Gance’s vision that counts here. Gance is not impressed with whether Napoleon is right or wrong, virtuous or deceitful, but by the scope of his achievement and the way he claimed an era as his own. For Gance the story of the revolution and its aftermath is Napoleon’s. He takes an uncritical attitude to his politics while embracing his nationalism and heroic dimensions. What interests Gance is a way to see and present the fullness of the period. “Napoleon is Prometheus” wrote Gance in the program to the first presentation of his film. The life of Napoleon for Gance is not a matter of morality or politics, it’s a work of art. This is not to say that the authenticity isn’t there, but Gance is more concerned with rendering the total texture of the times. His reading of the French revolution is as a chaotic detour France had to go through in order to get to Napoleon. History is treated not as the action and reaction of events but a complete canvas that has already been drawn and remains to be revealed. Like a medieval tapestry, all action seems to be going on at once with Napoleon at the top of the inevitable hierarchy. Napoleon is the consequence of all action in the film. “I am the revolution,” he says before he has even won a single battle. Napoleon is like an arrow let fly and propelled through space at a target we can see a mile off. The film starts with Napoleon’s days as a student at Brienne Military College and even as a child he possessed the qualities of the general: arrogance, aloofness and total self-assurance. He is the same at the beginning as at the end, only the way EAT UNDERGROUND in Seattle’s Oldest Restaurant lunch • dinner • cocktails entertainment 36 Clinton St. Quarterly Closed Sundays
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