Before I Die #603: Napoleon (1927)

This is the 603rd movie I've now seen out of the 1,187 movies on the "Before You Die" list that I'm gradually working my way through.

Director: Abel Gance

Massive and quite captivating much of the time. This is saying something for a five-and-a-half hour movie.

I'll admit to "cheating" on this one a bit. I didn't watch the entire 320-minute film in one sitting. Rather, I watched it in roughly one-hour segments over six days. This was probably wise, as forcing myself to absorb the whole thing may have done it a great injustice. The movie's title gives you the subject - that titanic force of history, Napoleon Bonaparte. French director Abel Gance, who had created the epic drama La Roue a few years prior, took on arguably the most iconic figure of his country's illustrious history. The movie really covers key moments in the man's earlier life, between Napoleon's boyhood and the moment that he achieves his greatest victories in his Italian campaigns. The movie ends here, not getting into his actual rule of France or his eventual downfall and death in exile on the island of Saint Helena.

The movie is taxing in terms of length, but it is still impressive in many places and in many aspects. The most trying element for modern viewers is likely to be just how overly long some of the sequences extend. Storytelling in film would get far leaner and more efficient over the succeeding few decades, but back in 1927 it was still commonplace for action and battle sequences to go on for five, ten, or even twenty minutes longer than was necessary to make a point or tell a visual picture. Napoleon features many such sequences, which are not helped by the fact that the visuals are not always terribly crisp. Similar to what you find in other large-scale war movies of the time, such as Griffith's Birth of a Nation, certain scenes will be obscured by massive amounts of smoke billowing for long enough to simply frustrate rather than build a sense of place. Certain pursuit scenes also tend to drag in places, in particular a long chase scene in which Corsican government officials pursue a fugitive Bonaparte across the plains of the island. If one were to use modern editing to trim away the fat, this film could probably be a very tight 180 or 210 minutes, rather than the sometimes-bloated 320 in which it clocks.

Like the man he portrays in the film, actor Albert Dieudonne
(left) was small in stature, but could exude an imperious aura
through his posture and steely gaze.

Still, the length aside, I was impressed at many moments in the film. Most obvious was the performance of Albert Dieudonne as the diminutive general. Dieudonne was rather striking as the short but supremely intense, confident, and capable Napoleon, and he often did it with a subtlety rare for starring roles at that time. There are several scenes in which Napoleon shuts down detractors or insolent suboordinates by merely staring them down. This sounds trite, but the scenes actually work, even by today's standards. And while much of movie features Bonaparte carrying himself with the imperious carriage that we associate with the man, there are a handful of scenes and moments when his posture relaxes, typically around his lady love Josephine. The contrast in physical language was essential for the silent era, and Dieudonne did it expertly, without ever overselling it in the way that most of his contemporaries did.

I'm no expert on Napoleon, but I have seen a couple of solid documentaries on the man and read a little bit. This movie was obviously meant to be something of Gance's version of Braveheart for the French - a very rousing, nationalistic look at a powerful and, at certain points, unifying figure in France's history. As such, there are some rather obviously nationalistic elements to the story. Honestly though, now that we're over 200 years past Napoleon and nearly 100 years past this film's release, it is easy to take some simple pleasure out of such scenes. One in particular features Napoleon storming into a regional government office in the island of Corsica, taking the French flag, declaring that the selfish and bickering bureaucrats are not worthy of it, and then using the flag as a sail to flee them and return to the motherland. How do you not get some kind of enjoyment out of such bald-faced patriotism?

Apparently, this movie had languished and been considered somewhat "lost" for many decades, due to there being a lack of a high-quality print. That was recently rememdied when the British Film Institute released a very nice restoration of the entire thing. It is, however, still rather tough to find outside of the U.K. If one is so inclined, though, it is worth seeking out. Fans of film history are bound to appreciate more than a few things about this old epic. Just be ready for a bit of dead weight here and there.

That's 603 movies down. Only 584 to go before I can die. 

Before I Die #568: La Roue (1923) [The Wheel]

This is the 568th movie I've seen from the 1,172 films on the "Before You Die" list that I'm gradually working through.

Director: Abel Gance

Early silent film dramas can really try my patience. Ones that are over two hours are even more taxing. So when I saw the running time of La Roue (French for "The Wheel") at a bulky four hours and 21 minutes, I marshaled my strength. Steeled as I was, it still was not enough to overcome the tedium that was this movie.

As with several other films from around this era - especially D.W. Griffith dramas such as Orphans of the Storm or Broken Blossoms - La Roue piles on the melodrama steady and thick. The story revolves around (see what I did there?) Sisif, his son Elie, and his daughter Norma. Sisif is a widowed railway engineer who, after a horrendous train accident, rescues the toddler Norma, whose parents have died in the wreck. Sisif takes Norma home and raises her as his own daughter, right alongside his son Elie, who is almost the same age as Norma. Though the family grows up poor, they are generally happy for some time, with neither Norma nor Elie knowing of Norma's true origins.

Once Norma becomes a young woman, however, things gradually take a dark turn. Sisif, knowing that Norma is not his biological daughter, develops a lust for her. He desperately attempts to subdue his urges and guilt through work and alcohol, but this creates more problems. He eventually attempts suicide, which fails, sending him further down a depressing spiral. Sisif ends up marrying Norma off to his boss - a greedy extortionist who also has a strong desire for the young woman. The problems complicate and grow until a fatal showdown between a couple of those involved.

This shot shows one of many effective uses of double
exposure. It also shows Sisif staring into the camera - a 
visual that became numbingly repetitive. 

For a movie released in 1924, the idea of incestuous (even adopted) lust is a rather dark and controversial topic. And generally, I did find that La Roue dealt with it in a relatively serious and commendable way, casting it all in terms of a Greek tragedy taking place within a low socio-economic class. That said, the story hardly seemed to need over four hours to be told. (I read that the original cut of the movie was over seven hours! I can't even imagine.) This is in keeping with nearly all silent dramas of the day, especially those that were innovative in terms of film grammar and technique. I can only assume that the many extended close-ups and dramatic sequences were meant to allow the audience to drink in the emotion of the story. For viewers in the 1920s, this may have been less taxing. For me, though, much of it now feels highly overwrought. Because films became much more efficient and subtle over the succeeding decades, many of the scenes in The Wheel simply drag. There were multiple times when I would zone out for a few minutes, only to bring my attention back to the movie and find that it was still in the same scene, conveying the same plot point or emotion.

I do understand why the movie is considered important. Director Abel Gance showed a mastery of editing and advanced film techniques that were on par with the all-time great directors of his day. Compared to the movies of Griffith or Von Stroheim, Gance used quick cuts, overlaps, and changing visual rhythms in ways that were still quite new for the time. And he did imbue the film with a grand, epic feeling that was rarely granted to such humanistic stories at the time. When taken with the social commentary of the tale, it is not hard to see why this movie is considered a landmark in cinema.

It is hard, however, to sit through four-and-a-half hours of it. This one is recommended only to the most devout of film historians and silent movie aficionados.