The greatest directors use streaming platforms to carry out their projects. Made for Apple Studio, Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” suffered from an editing that was too shortened for the theater.
After Abel Gance, Sergueï Bondarchuk, King Vidor, Sacha Guitry, or Stanley Kubrick’s aborted project, Ridley Scott tackles the most recurring historical character in cinema with Joan of Arc. Napoleon fascinates filmmakers. Is it because filming is a bit of a battlefield? The strategy brings them together and the director is like a general on a set. Made for AppleTV+, the Napoleon by Ridley Scott, lasting 4h30 is reduced to 2h40 for the audience, which is bitterly felt.
Napoleon and Josephine
From the siege of Toulon (1793) to Waterloo (1815), the film unfolds the rise, the Empire and the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. His relentless conquest of power, his campaigns and his defection follow in parallel with his tormented, passionate relationship with Joséphine, the great love of his life. In love as in war, everything seems to be a matter of combat.
Ridley Scott stands out from the many filmmakers who have dedicated a film to Napoleon, by favoring the intimate character and his love for Joséphine de Beauharnais. Really passionate about both, he married her in 1796 and remained in love with her until his death in 1815. This is the focal point of the film, beyond the numerous battles which punctuate it, and this which distinguishes it from other versions. Joaquin Phoenix tactfully takes on the role of the Emperor. Just like Vanessa Kirby plays a most credible Josephine. Their numerous verbal exchanges, but not only that, contribute to the best of the film, which we could not have expected.
Scalpel blows
Ridley Scott had already tackled the Napoleonic Wars in his first feature film, The Duelists (1977), and its Napoleon does not recover Stanley Kubrick’s never-completed project on the subject. Scott is a descendant of Kubrick in the ambition of his productions. He has also carried out many historical reconstructions (Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance), Napoleon is a natural subject for him. The production is not flashy, but nourished by realism, and it does not compromise with the television format, for which the film is intended, by not giving pride of place to medium shots. Napoleon is a real cinema film.
But the problem lies in the editing, construction and rhythm. Cutting two hours out of the initial four and a half hours of the film requires a good deal of scalpel work. Also, the bluntest cuts are sometimes very artificial and showy. Like this overview in three or four shots of the traumatic retreat from Russia in 1812, linked to a frame of Napoleon seated in an armchair at Fontainebleau: the ellipse is awkward. More than one connection leaves something to be desired. They seem to result from forced commercial options, ultimately detrimental to the film. The same symptom struck Heaven’s Gate by Michael Cimino in 1979, whose 3h40 reduced to 2h20 made it an ordinary film, while its entirety is a masterpiece. Ridley Scott would like to see his 4h30 film broadcast on the big screen, it’s the greatest harm that we wish him (and us).
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The sheet
Gender : Historical
Director: Ridley Scott
Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Ben Miles, Youssef Kerkour, Ruppert Everett, Mark Bonnar, Edward Eales-White
Country : Britain
Duration : 2h39
Exit : November 22, 2023
Distributer : Sony Pictures Releasing France
Synopsis: Spectacular fresco, Napoleon focuses on the rise and fall of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The film traces Bonaparte’s relentless conquest of power through the prism of his passionate and tormented relationship with Joséphine, the great love of his life.