Napoléon

Among the historical works of Mister Guitry who epitomizes French humor,French wit and French spirit ,"Napoleon" is to my eyes the least interesting:it lacks the sweep of "Si Versailles M'Etait Conté " the absurd humor of the underrated "Si Paris M'Etait Conté" ,the madness of the "Perles de la Couronne ".Well and there is also "En remontant les Champs Elysees "....

These big budgets works-there were only a few in France of the fifties ,foreign users would be surprised if they were told that only a very small percentage of movies were shot in color - have all something in common: the main character,Napoleon or La Fayette is played by not-very-famous actors (Here Raymond Pellegrin,in Gance's "Austerlitz " (not to be mistaken for his silent movie of 1927),it's Pierre Mondy ,and in Dreville's "La Fayette" ,it's Michel Le Royer,whereas the supporting cast includes all the who's who of the FRench cinema (not only ,Orson Welles shows up from time to time).

For instance,in "Napoleon" there are plenty of stars:Michèle Morgan ,Danielle Darrieux,Jean-Pierre Aumont,Henri Vidal,Jean Gabin,Michel Simon,Jean Marais,Serge Reggiani,Pierre Brasseur,Daniel Gélin (as a young long-haired Napo) etc etc etc

The film when you watch it in FRench is obviously desperately in need of humor,Guitry's forte.It looks like a beautiful pictures book which could be summarized as "Napoleon was a great man.Period".The less glorious episodes are almost passed over in silence ,like the Trafalgar disaster or the Russian retreat.Only Montand's song and Lannes ,now a legless cripple,pointing to the ambulance full of dying men and screaming "Enough!" have some emotional power.

The crowning in Notre Dame is botched (Abel Gance found a better treatment of that scene in his own "Austerlitz ")

Get the follow -up "Si Paris M'Etait Conté" instead !This was to be Guitry's testament

This poorly made inexcusable film tries to be too sympathetic to Napoleon and is loaded with innumerable historical inaccuracies. Talleyrand doing the narration is absurd to begin with since he continually back stabbed Napoleon at every turn. Whether one loves the Emperor or loathes him, this movie will only bore you to tears. The acting is wooden and monotonous with the characters all indistinguishable from each other. The famous Battle of Waterloo is given all of one minute without even mentioning Napoleon's opposition and the retreat from Moscow isn't even shown at all. Anything worthwhile that Napoleon did in his lifetime is also completely left out. Lastly, Orson Welles as Sir Hudson Lowe (Napoleon's jailer on St. Helena) is the most incredible case of miscasting I've ever seen in any movie. It just shows how far Welles' stock had fallen in Hollywood to be involved in this farce just for a paycheck. Abel Gance's "Napoleon" from 1927 is still the film to see if one is interested in the life of the Emporer. Napoleon was at least an entertaining and animated conqueror/dictator. In this 1955 version starring Daniel Gelin, he is merely a glaring monosyllabic moron.

It would be unfair to rate the butchered 2 hour version of Sacha Guitry's 3 hour saga - and impossible to believe that the complete work could be anywhere near as awful. A whistle-stop tour (told mostly by a narrator) of Napoleon's life that glosses over almost every aspect of it, and provides us with little depth or context. Avoid this version at all costs.

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." Sacha Guitry

Guitry would have been very amused by some the comments posted here. It never was his intent to do an historically accurate movie. Anyone slightly familiar with his filmography knows the subtle derision he infused in all his storytelling. I found that movie very entertaining but I know, as some of my fellow commentators should too, that for factual accuracy one must look elsewhere. I too recommend his rendition of the highs and lows of the French monarchy in " Si Versailles m'était conté ".

The poorly dubbed English version is appropriately available on a poor, slightly-out-of-focus and somewhat-drained-of-color Hollywood Classics DVD. Produced on a lavish budget with a galaxy of famous players as long as your arm, this is an egocentric production in which most of the famous stars – buried under loads of make-up – are totally unrecognizable. Robbing them of their voices doesn't help either. Daniel Gélin plays the young Napoleon, but the role is soon taken over by Raymond Pellegrin – who looks nothing like Gélin but bears a remarkable similarity to Charles Boyer's Nappy in Clarence Brown's 1937 Conquest. The movie is directed by Sacha Guitry as an almost endless series of boring tableaux which may have been reasonably effective in the original French production, but look old-fashioned and stagey in the carelessly dubbed DVD (which gives no indication of its length but is most obviously NOT 3 hours and 10 minutes, and I seriously doubt that it is even 105 minutes).