AWAITING THE ARRIVAL OF "NAPOLEON"

I suppose we have all seen the trailers and ads on television about the upcoming theater movie, "Napoleon." This two-and-a-half hour "epic" is set to debut on the big screen at Thanksgiving. It has already been hyped a great deal in the media. I plan to see it at my earliest convenience. Find an announcement about the new movie HERE .

I am actually looking forward to it although I expect the film-makers have taken great liberties with actual characters and events. In graduate school at Florida State, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to specialize in the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon. FSU was then, and still is, one of the few universities in America that offered intense study in this particular period of history. My major professor was a world-renowned scholar of Napoleonic military history and amassed the largest library in the country on this period of history.

Over the years I have published several books and numerous articles on the French Revolution and Napoleon. I spent six years scouring the major libraries of Europe and America to compile a comprehensive bibliography of the books, articles, and other writings on the age of Napoleon, 1799-1815. This was something that had never been done before. I published a massive two-volume work in 1991 to great reviews. It listed 48,000 items. With the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, more books have been written about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other character of modern history. He has always fascinated people, historians and lay people alike.

The new movie is certainly not the first movie made about Napoleon, far from it. There have been dozens of them starting back in the silent era. In fact, the groundbreaking film came with Abel Gance's 1927 masterpiece, "Napoleon." Unfortunately, no actor has ever embodied the Napoleon we know from history. The worst attempt ever was Marlon Brando in "Desirée."

Awful. He played, well, Brando. From the new trailers, Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Napoleon, sounds a lot like Brando. Not a good sign.

Nevertheless, there were some very good parts of the movies that are still worthy of viewing. When I was a teenager, I was enthralled by the 1956 movie, "War and Peace," with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn. I watched it, mesmerized, on the huge screen of the Saenger theater in Pensacola. I can still feel the agony of the retreat from Russia. In my opinion the greatest Napoleonic battle scene ever put on film was in the 1966 Soviet six-hour version of "War and Peace." The Battle of Borodino used 100,000 actors and took forty-five minutes of the movie. The 1971 movie, "Waterloo" also did a good job of recreating that fatal battle. Unfortunately, most of the  movies and television production on Napoleon are forgettable junk. 

Of course, Hollywood movies have been all over the place in depicting history. In my mind, the greatest characterization of Louis XVI came in the 1938 movie, "Marie Antoinette." Robert Morley was the very reincarnation of Louis. I used to show the movie in my classes for that reason. On the other hand, the worst movie about history was actually one of the greatest movies ever made, 1939's "Gone With the Wind." It conjured up a fictional view of a past that never existed of rich white southerners and happy black slaves. The movie has had a huge and negative effect on southerners around the issue of race. An awful lot of white people still cling to the myth perpetuated by that movie that blacks were well off and well treated as slaves and that the white people were the victims. In my opinion, "Gone With the Wind" has done tremendous damage to race relations in the south. This is the power of what a movie can do.

I am already having troubles with some of the things in the trailers, little things that are wrongly portrayed. And why they threw in Marie Antoinette, I cannot imagine. Napoleon had nothing to do with her execution. I also have a lot of doubt about Joaquin Phoenix. He is too old for the part. Napoleon was very young, and youthful. He was only 19 when the Revolution began, and just 23 when he won his first big battle and became a brigadier general. He was just 30 when he came to power. 

The moviemakers promised to center the story on the relationship between N and Josephine. Good, except it would take a lot longer than two and a half hours to deal with that. It was passionate, but also highly complicated, and it was about a lot more than sex. 

So, I am trying to keep an open mind and see what the movie has to offer without prejudice. We are told the battle scenes alone are worth it. It includes the Battle of Austerlitz, N's "perfect" battle of 1805 that solidified his reputation as a great military genius. It also shows Waterloo, the last battle when the genius had lost his magic. Modern technology should be able to show these battles in a far more realistic way than in the films of old. We shall see.

I shall return with my thoughts about "Napoleon" after I have seen the new movie. Perhaps you will see the movie and share your thoughts with me. 

I will go over then my views of the place of Napoleon Bonaparte in history, a least a little summary of them. Meanwhile, let's enjoy (hopefully) the movie about one of the most fascinating characters in all of history.