A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.
Direction
Gance invented camera techniques cinema still hasn't exhausted.
Cinematography
Handheld chaos, rapid montage, kaleidoscopic fever—this is 1927.
Editing
Polyvision triptych finale: three screens, one massive ego.
Director
Abel Gance
Albert Dieudonné
Napoléon Bonaparte
Nicolas Roudenko
Napoléon Bonaparte (Child)
Edmond van Daële
Maximilien Robespierre
Alexandre Koubitzky
Georges Jacques Danton
Antonin Artaud
Jean-Paul Marat
Abel Gance
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
Gina Manès
Joséphine, Viscountess of Beauharnais
Nicolas Koline
Tristan Fleury
Annabella
Violine Fleury / Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary
Maurice Schutz
Filippo Antonio Pasquale di Paoli
Philippe Hériat
Antoine Christophe Saliceti
Acho Chakatouny
Count Charles-André Pozzo of Borgo
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Gance filmed battle scenes during actual thunderstorms when possible, because nature was cheaper than effects and more dramatic than fake rain.
This was meant as Part One of six. Gance never completed the saga, leaving us with cinema's most magnificent fragment.
FR
