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Estimated at more than four million euros, the restoration of this masterpiece of French and world cinema from 1927, led by the Cinémathèque française, will finally allow it to be presented to the public, in two parts, from Wednesday July 10.
This is the end of an incredible adventure that lasted more than fifteen years. It all began in 2007, when the Cinémathèque française asked director and researcher Georges Mourier for an inventory of the different pieces of the Napoleon by Abel Gance, released in 1927, scattered across nearly 300 boxes (there will be more than 1,000 in total, including those in the CNC collection), knowing that 22 different versions of the film existed over time, for a mission that should normally have lasted only six months. “From the first boxes that I opened in 2008, I was already understanding that, given the heritage situation of the film, if we embarked on a restoration, the digital and mechanical tools that we would need did not yet exist, remembers Georges Mourier. So we first waited years to be sure that it was feasible, I haven’t counted the number of progress reports and feasibility studies that I wrote for the Cinémathèque française.”
Inventory, then expertise, and finally time for the restoration itself, which only truly began in 2017 at the Fort de Saint-Cyr, in the Yvelines. In the meantime, it was necessary to patiently put the film back in order and wait for technology to provide sufficiently modern devices to restore the images, numbering 600,000, since the entire film, which is being re-released in theaters in two parts, lasts about 7 hours 30.
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But it was all worth it, because very objectively we are really facing a masterpiece and a piece of world cinema heritage. With this very moving impression of witnessing the birth of the seventh art itself, this is the case for example with the first part of the film, in Brienne, the military school, where Bonaparte as a child plays in the snow.
When the film was officially screened to a limited audience (press and guests) first at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14 and then at Bercy a few days later, the director of the Cinémathèque Frédéric Bonnaud felt a mixture of emotion and pride, but also a form of relief: “Every new problem or setback that arose, technical or otherwise, forced us to find different solutions. I was actually quite eager, I must admit, to let go of the film, to release it to the public. And let others besides us take hold of this version of Napoleon, love it, reject it, discuss it, contest it or idolize it, whatever they want, but let others besides me take care of Napoleon and let it occupy their thoughts.”
“We feel like we have reached the end of a long and sometimes complicated adventure, which chose us more than we chose it.”
Frédéric Bonnaud, director of the French Cinemathequeto franceinfo
For this extraordinary restoration, costing just over four million euros, the Cinémathèque was able to benefit in particular from the support of Netflix, which has become a patron of Napoleon in 2019.
If several scenes in the film seem unforgettable to us, it is also thanks to its music. The musical accompaniment of the film – originally silent – is an essential element of this modern version, fundamental even. Here too, we must salute the titanic work accomplished by the composer Simon Cloquet-Lafollye who for three years drew on 100 existing classical works, replayed by 200 musicians from the three musical groups of Radio France, namely “a huge symphonic poem over seven hours of uninterrupted music.”
“Gance’s film is a colossal film, it is the end of the great silent cinema, the talkies arrive, it is truly the last great epic film, underlines Simon Cloquet-Lafollye. So it was necessary to find a score of its excess, in a certain way, it was necessary to rearrange music ranging from Joseph Haydn, end of the 18th century, to Krzysztof Penderecki, end of the 20th century, to create a music which transcends genres and eras, and which only resembles the Napoleon by Abel Gance.”
And in one of the most incredible sequences of the film, with music and singing, Rouget de Lisle and Danton learn what will become The Marseillaise to the people, in the Cordeliers Convent in Paris.
On Wednesday, July 10, the film will finally be shown in theaters, for both moviegoers who already know the old version and the lucky ones who will discover it for the first time. If Georges Mourier, the main architect of this artistic tour de force, had to encourage people who were hesitant to go see an old silent film that lasted more than seven hours, he would tell them “That it is a unique cinematic experience. With the visual delirium, the joy of creating that there is in this film, which makes it remain very modern, with inside full of ideas for the cinema of tomorrow. I believe that it is only in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) and this helicopter attack with Wagner’s music that I really felt that. So it’s a physical and sensual experience, even beyond a cinephilic experience.”
Over time, this reconstruction of Napoleon even ended up becoming as legendary as the film itself.