After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.
Practical Effects
Real 15,000 Soviet soldiers as extras—no CGI, just pure communist logistics.
Acting
Rod Steiger's Napoleon: sweaty, paranoid, magnificent.
Direction
Bondarchuk's battlefield geography is genuinely educational.
Director
Sergey Bondarchuk
Rod Steiger
Napoleon Bonaparte
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
Orson Welles
Louis XVIII
Jack Hawkins
General Sir Thomas Picton
Virginia McKenna
Duchess of Richmond
Dan O'Herlihy
Marshal Michel Ney
Rupert Davies
Gordon
Philippe Forquet
La Bedoyere
Gianni Garko
Drouot
Ivo Garrani
Marshal Soult
Ian Ogilvy
De Lancey
Michael Wilding
Colonel Sir William Ponsonby
Terence Alexander
Lord Uxbridge
Donal Donnelly
O'Connor
Oleg Vidov
Tomlinson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Soviet Army provided soldiers as extras, making this one of the most expensive films ever made at the time—and yes, they were paid in hard currency the USSR desperately needed.
Bondarchuk had just directed the Soviet 'War and Peace' and brought that same maximalist, nation-state-resources approach to this Anglo-American production, creating a weird Cold War collaboration about European imperial collapse.
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