Napoleon (1927)

From a boy (Vladimir Roudenko) in a military school in 1783 through the horrors of the French Revolution to the 1796 Italian campaign, the early years of Napoleon Bonaparte (Albert Dieudonne) are traced in detail. Directed by Abel Gance, this 5 1/2 hour silent epic with two intermissions is one of the great epics of 20th century cinema. It's an astonishing piece of work incorporating techniques that advanced cinema. It's not stagnant at all, it's quite fluid and in spite of its length, one never feels antsy. I won't go into the details of its history and the near 20 years it took to restore it to Gance's original vision, you can google it. I first saw it in 1981 with a live 60 piece symphony orchestra at the massive Shrine auditorium in Los Angeles and it remains the most thrilling movie going experience I've ever had. Alas, no home video experience can replicate the majesty of seeing the film theatrically and certainly not the astonishing triple width screen finale! The film feels fresh and vital, not like a museum piece. The camera movements, the editing, the expert use of a massive cast of thousands, this is a visual feast. Dieudonne has a face made for the cinema and while I wouldn't call his performance great, he holds the camera as well as any Hollywood icon. De rigeur for anyone remotely interested in film. The cast includes Gina Manes as Josephine, Annabella, Antonin Artaud, Alexandre Koubitzky, Edmond Van Daele and Gance himself as Saint-Just.