(Paris) The first part of Napoleon by Abel Gance, a legendary work of silent cinema, will be screened in May at the Cannes Film Festival, in a version eagerly awaited by film buffs and which required more than fifteen years of restoration.
A century after its filming, it is the first of two parts of the film, lasting 3 hours 40 minutes over 7 hours, which will be presented at the opening of Cannes Classics, a selection dedicated to heritage cinema, the organizers announced.
Major and unclassifiable piece, Napoleon is revered by a number of film buffs and filmmakers, first and foremost Francis Ford Coppola, who is also making his comeback at Cannes, in competition, with Megalopolis.
Under the leadership of the Cinémathèque française, a small team collected nearly 100 kilometers of film scattered all over the world, from New York to Italy via Denmark, to reconstruct this version which aims to be faithful to the original work
Recounting Napoleon’s youth, up to the beginnings of the Italian campaign, the film, screened for the first time in 1927, is carried by an epic breath, full of visual and narrative innovations (including a famous triptych ending, on three screens simultaneously). The restoration budget is estimated between 2 and 2.5 million euros.
After Cannes, the film must be screened “in its entirety as an exceptional symphonic film concert, with 250 musicians from Radio France”, at the Seine Musicale in Paris on July 4 and 5, as well as at the Radio France festival in Montpellier, then at the Cinémathèque française and in summer festivals.
“It will be released later in French theaters and will be broadcast on France Télévisions and on Netflix,” specifies a press release.