Napoleon
It's been a while since I watched a really long historical drama, but it feels good to get back in the saddle. This movie affected me less than War and Peace, but in terms of technical accomplishment might still be unparalleled.
Something I'll always call out in a film is the use of dissolves, and this movie has them in spades. In fact, I would say that these are the very best dissolves I've personally seen in any film, outmatching even Bondarchuk's War and Peace, which had some truly incredible dissolves, but none so utterly perfect as those in which we see the demagogue Manton riling up the crowd with fading fire and brimstone over his image, or the various dissolves showing Napoleon's revelry in and mastery over chaos, a command which it seems comes from his own half-wild nature, or the shot in which Napoleon is thinking about his wife so obsessively that she fades in and out all over the screen repeatedly.
This thing has a lot more humor than I expected, and it always lands. In general, this is just a surprisingly really fun film in my opinion. The humor, the frenetic pace of the montages, the bombastic use of color, the cinematography which repeatedly left me gaping, the deific characterization of Napoleon himself, extremely entertaining performances like that of Antonin Artaud, himself a distinguished and very famous dramatist, or that of Albert Dieudonné as Napoleon. In fact, this may just be the best part, as Dieudonné plays him with an incredible array of fascinating personal qualities. He delivers one of the most truly ecstatic performances I've ever seen (one of several genuinely ecstatic performances in this very film).
In the middle, during the lengthy siege of Toulon, there's an absolutely amazing use of rain which is probably connected to a drought somewhere in France back then.
I'm fascinated by the depiction of the three revolutionary leaders (Danton, Marat, and Robespierre). They are, in part, the infernal counterpart to Napoleon's own messianic presence in the film. But their ideals are as important as their failings. Saint-Just is played by Abel Gance himself, and delivers a phenomenal monologue in which he acts as apologist to the French Revolution, outlining the vast legitimate good done by the Revolution. In the second part, Napoleon eventually has a vision of these leaders of the French Revolution, and their spirits impart the Revolution into his hands to spread across the world.
(On the subject of Napoleon's divine significance, the girl who falls in love with him in part 1 makes a shrine to him and begins to worship him. Several shots of the film show a corona of light suggestive of a halo behind Napoleon's head.)
Something that's nice about this film is that, like most films from before a certain time, the blocking is really incredible. The placement of every individual in a scene, even the larger battles, is often very precise and appealing, key to some of the great shots of this film.
The final triptych sequence is phenomenal, obviously, but it's interesting how much it serves as a summation of the film as a whole by reiterating so many of the important images of the film.
What a fucking movie.
"I maintain that he will go far. He is granite heated by a volcano."
alt. quote: "The assembly felt itself under lightning."
alt. alt. quote: "The lightning of the sky and the cannons surround him."
alt. alt. alt. quote: "Du pain, des olives, du silence!"
alt. alt. alt. alt. quote, it's getting ridiculous now: "Impossible is not French."
alt. alt. alt. alt. alt. quote: "Together, these three women drove Paris mad."
alt. alt. alt. alt. alt. alt. quote, as if it weren't enough already: "What are your plans, Bonaparte?" "The liberation of oppressed peoples, the merging of major European interests, the abolition of borders...and...THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC."