Austerlitz

I will begin by saying that I enjoyed enormously "Austerlitz"'s second part,that is,the military show as such.The political preamble is interesting by many things:Pierre Mondy's acting (though a miscast),the many good cameos (we have Mrs. Caron,Mrs. Cardinale,Mrs. Popesco, Palance, Marais,Simon,Trintignant,Welles,Pavloff,Jean Mercure in the same show,and at their best),many well-thought scenes,the cinematographic thinking of Gance,the script's sobriety in the treatment of the Bonaparte family (arrogance,vanity,etc.). I cannot but admire the choice of the bit parts.Many vignettes are ANTHOLOGICAL (e.g.,the Pope calling Bonaparte a comedian).No cheap jokes.

The script is unconventional,dense and considerate. Napoleon appears as a peevish, tetchy, burlesque, selfish,petulant, aggressive and endowed man (this portrait is very fair and balanced,and,if ironical and humorist, it is not at all disrespectful, heinous, outrageous--it is not a cartoon);his family:a bevy of greedy pushers,arrogant, vain parvenus, coarse intriguers, cads. The pettiness and the misery do not lack in Bonaparte's life.His sweetheart is a dowdy.

I liked a lot the costumes,the clothes,the uniforms.

Gance makes parade before our pleased eyes a series of expressive figurines,exquisitely molded (Carnot, Talleyrand,Kutuzov, Fulton,Mlle De Vaudey,Madame Récamier,Weirother,Lannes,Pius VII,etc.,etc.).

The women in this movie (Mrs. Caron,Mrs. Cardinale,Mrs. Elvire Popesco) are radiant and brilliant.

The more I think about "Austerlitz",the more I perceive its greatness and value."Austerlitz" must be tasted,but also thought about,analyzed. It satisfies both the heart and mind.

For me,"Austerlitz" is one of the most amazing,though imperfect, masterpieces.

This movie has its flaws;it also has obvious qualities and is worth watching .Practically,all the cameos are exceptional,a real feast:first of all,Marais and Simon,and also Wells,a very young Trintignant,Palance (it is quite debatable if Palance's histrionic performance is really that kitsch and tasteless;I think he was just playing Russian,though his role is that of an Austrian,and he succeeded in creating some funny moments in the movie;I enjoy what Palance did with his role:it's buffoonish,but also fun),etc..Marais is a standout,simply astonishing. The same is true about Jean Mercure (as "Talleyrand") and Polycarpe Pavloff (as "Kutuzov").

Pierre Mondy is an obviously skilled actor,but a miscast as Bonaparte.His ingrate physique does not help him this way.In the first part,that of the political rise of Napoleon,Pierre Mondy looks choleric,roguish,voluntary,brutal,mocking,irascible,clownish enough;but he can't look inspired,exceptional,larger-than-life.Maybe this is not Bonaparte,but is a well-made role.Undoubtedly,Pierre Mondy knows his job;but his performing is,sometimes,theatrical,and rather inadequate for cinema.A pleasant surprise is "Austerlitz"'s realism and irony,its lack of idolatry and of inhibitions:we see the Bonaparte family as it was,a bevy of parvenus and cads.

Gance does not incense Bonaparte's holy cards,does not extol him measureless.On the contrary,the script shows a powerful,able,sharp and temperate mind.

In "Austerlitz"'s first part,that might be entitled "Napoleon's rising" ,some actors play stiffly ,are theatrical and formal,obsolete and worn out,the movie recalls the scene.But the cameos (Marais,Simon, Trintignant,Pavloff) bring in a vast amount of exciting and largehearted acting.

I guess the first part of "Austerlitz" was intended as a prologue,a preparation,a political and historical preface.

The society depicted was a theatrical and quite cold one;still,the THEATRALISM of some of the performances displeases.Even the theatrical characters must be performed lively.

Simon's performance (as "Auboise") simply sweeps away anyone else on the set;his comic role is a great landmark in the history of cinema.

I am a huge fan of this second part of "Austerlitz";its photography is excellent:a gorgeous looking film .I also enjoyed a lot the cameos from Marais,Simon,De Sica (flawless!!!),Mrs. Elvire Popesco,Wells,Marchal (though not very remarkable here).

This fresco must be rehabilitated urgently.

Any national cinematography would take pride in a movie like "Austerlitz". But I guess many don't get this film's greatness, nor Gance's showmanship and taste.

Finally,I will add that Bloy held Bonaparte in high esteem;so did Hegel,Balzac, Stendhal,and even,in his youth,Schopenhauer.

This is two different movies stuck together. In the first part Napoleon is introduced in a very informal way, showing him debating hats with his personal valet. For a moment I thought it was going to be a comedy... Then the plot takes a more serious turn, with Napoleon in Paris, undecided about seizing power and proclaiming himself emperor. I watched the original French version, which includes several scenes in English, showing the British plotting against Napoleon and the events leading to the execution of the duke d'Enghien.

Still in Paris we are shown Napoleon's greedy family and mistress, and his coronation (luckily only narrated) and then the story finally marches (literally) toward the battle of Austerlitz. Several scenes show the Russians and the Austrians preparing for war and debating in French, as the only common language and then the battle itself, which is a long and slightly boring series of scenes lasting over one hour, with a bit of battle, then Napoleon talking strategies with his generals, more battle, strategies discussed by Russians and Austrians and again battle and Napoleon.

Napoleon won this one, considered as his greatest success and Gance wraps up the movie on a patriotic and chauvinist note, with the Marseilles blasting on screen.

Despite the sumptuous costumes and the many stellar cameos, the film is uneven in tone and contains some weird scenes: the opening with Pierre Mondy as a peevish Napoleon is bizarre as is the scene with Napoleon in a bathtub discussing with his ministers; Napoleon encounters with his lover are superfluous as is the meeting with Robert Fulton (played nonetheless by Orson Welles in a useless cameo); the coronation narrated to the servants with the help of puppets is beyond bizarre and even the battle drags on forever, without an apex.

This movie is a huge disappointment. You'd expect the battle of Austerlitz to be the core subject as the title suggests, but it's not. Most of the movie is about the Napoleonic era before the battle, with a pseudo historic perspective. If you know just a little about history, you'll find yourself yawning most of the time, as Abel Gance tries to describe the situation for hours, through endless dialogs. Then when Napoleon is about to be crowned, you think: oh no, not another half hour just for that scene. Fortunately there's no coronation scene, but.. worse: it's told! You guess correctly: Gance didn't have the budget to do it. He might as well just skipped the whole episode.

By then you've waited more than 2 hours and still no battle in sight. At last the battle comes but what you see is a tragic waste. The tactics and whereabouts of the battle are not shown but told, and you can hardly understand what's going on. A cavalry charges from right to left (a couple hundred horses), and you assume it's the Austrian cavalry. Then you're told that they're defeated by the French, and you see the same guys charging from left to right (they don't even seem to have switched costumes). Parts of the battle were filmed in studio, with ridiculous painted backgrounds. The close combat scenes are unrealistic at best. Soldiers fall apparently for no reason, and if nobody told you about the outcome, you wouldn't know who won or lost. The last scene with the French Army singing the national anthem completes the cinematographic disaster.

All in all, you sit back with the feeling that this movie was conceived and shot in the early days of movie making, not in 1960: it's not a movie about Austerlitz, it's the pathetic attempt of an aging man trying to describe the glory of an emperor he admired. The result is a boring picture that doesn't even enhance our historic understanding of the Napoleon era (in spite of Gance's attempts to stick to some historic details).

Abel Gance's unabashed adoration of Napoléon Bonaparte bore fruit in one of the undisputed masterpieces of silent cinema. Thirty-four years later he again depicts his hero in a film that is totally devoid of the flair and dazzling inventiveness of the earlier work. He is assisted by Roger Richebé who had directed Gance's original Napoléon, Albert Dieudonné, in that actor's second outing in the role in 'Madame sans-gene.' Here he is played by Pierre Mondy.

One is impressed by the art direction, costume design and the beautifully shot series of tableaux vivants by Messieurs Alekan and Juillard but alas the whole enterprise is verbose, bombastic, self-indulgent and uninspired and fails to justify its lumbering two and three-quarter hour length.

Most of the males are marionettes with the notable exceptions of Welles, Marais, Trintignant and Marchal whilst grizzled Michel Simon does an outrageous turn as one of Napoléon's Old Guard. Plenty of cleavage on display and an enchanting cameo by Leslie Caron as one of Bony's extra-marital activities. The most ludicrous piece of casting is that of Jack Palance as an Austrian General. As Pope Pius V11 an utterly expressionless Vittorio de Sica calls Bonaparte ' a comedian' which pretty well sums up Pierre Mondy's portrayal.

Regarding Monsieur Gance's output I think it fair to say that 'silence is golden.'

This movie exemplifies the debt that French cinema owes to theater. And, it shows how it can crumble under it.

One cannot say that this movie is badly made, lazy or uninspired. Yet, I did not feel the grandeur of this historic episode as I think it was intended. The movie is not boring or flat. However, for a film that covers the most brilliant victory of a legendary general, it feels a bit toothless.

The film spends the first half carefully laying out the situation and issues that led Napoleon to crown himself emperor. I would say that it is rather static, and feels like a play. It is dialog-heavy. I am not sure why Mondy was chosen as Napoleon. He looks convincing in most of it, yet he does a lot of yelling, which does not give off a statesman-like quality. It does not really capture the heft of it. The film is also heavy on intrigue and personal drama, it can feel tedious if you're not into French history. Some important events happen off-screen; it is harder to keep being engaged with what is happening.

My favorite scene happens as an act-break of sorts, roughly at the middle, it is Napoleons coronation. It is off-screen as well, but it is represented in form of house staff following the ceremony in parallel; at the palace not the church, with the help of rehearsal miniatures. That is where Gances talent shines. It is the best stuff in the movie and it is very clever and inventive. I suspect that it was done this way because filming the actual re-enactment of the ceremony would have been too expensive/difficult. Yet, it totally works. It treats an event that is big, extravagant, symbolic in something more intimate. The scene encapsulates something more classical. Because it focuses not on Napoleon, the pope or the dignitaries, but on the house staff reactions, you get something sweetly human. It is the reaction of the common folk, the little people. One of his aides provides a voice-over that turns the scene into something very poetic, almost Communion-like. It makes it very solemn and dignified. The immobile lifeless miniatures tie the scene in a very iconic, clean, divine bow.

Generally, you get that this film serves as an update to Gances own Napoleon. In that sense, it would serve as an example that less is more. The previous film was regarded, and still is, as one of the most inventive and important of the silent era. Here, you can feel that with the use of sound, dialog, color and the ability to film battles and impressive set-pieces; you are losing the essence of Napoleon: the persona. The strength of the film Napoleon was the visuals and the sense of distant majestic dignity it conveyed. In Austerlitz, despite sound and color, you lose the striking visual poetry. You are left with more precise plot points, but less evocative characters.