Napoleon: Abel Gance's Classic Film
Language: English
Pages: 310
ISBN: 0394721160
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When he was fifteen, Kevin Brownlow saw two reels of the 1927 Napoleon, and it changed his life. The film was more daring, both technically and artistically, than anything he had ever seen. How could it have been forgotten? Brownlow got in touch with the film's director and tracked down members of its cast and crew. He discovered that the making of the film was as much of an epic as the film itself. In 1967, he began an attempt to restore Napoleon. The work took years, but eventually Napoleon was presented, with live orchestra, to a new generation, and, as one critic put it, it became "the measure for all other films, forever." This book tells the dramatic story of Napoleon's incredible revival and also serves as a wonderful introduction and companion to the film.
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his carefull) preserved until he needed them, and some of which he despatched to his A collaborators. piece of film showing horses in a stable (probabh from UAtre, a film Gance produced) was attached to a note: 'Burel we must obtain photography with the quality of these blacks and whites the\ are pure? Another was sent to Feldman: 'M. Simon my Sept camera in a rubber ball.' They reveal the involvement of unexpected people: 'See Man Ray's tests of friend of Roche's! them.' 7 They show
The a luxury.' 8 'We were armed with snowballs of cotton wool,' said Gabriel Fornaseri. 'They were so light we couldn't throw them very far. One of the boys made one out of real snow, very hard, and threw battle took place it at on a large field. Roudenko, making the forehead. He began cameramen and to cry his nose bleed and wounding him and there was a great hullabaloo with all the directors shouting at the sequence interrupted.' him slightly to carry on, as they didn't on
many as he needed staff Grandval. There was a Isle would receive volunteers at the mad rush, and Geftman had as within half an hour. Payment was at the standard rate for extras of 25 francs a day. As Lectures pour tons pointed out, what they were being ottered was no sinecure; starting at six in the morning, wearing old clothes which were far too hot in the blazing sun- goat-skin capes, sheepskins, wigs again and again, being shouted at by assistant directors, being rehearsing
voice in all his remarkable equi- the time I worked on the 121 The Waking Gina Manes as Josephine. 'During my test,' said Gma Manes (whose real name was Blanche Moulin), 'Gance told me to sing a comic song. I sang, thinking this was just a joke. Then he said, "Sing a sentimental song." I told him I didn't know any. "Doesn't matter: sing 'la-la-la." So I did. After that, he said, "Right, go and there. I shall he say but don i behind you. There's the camera. Don't look into it. sit
Jury-Metro-Goldwyn, to hide behind smokescreen of mendacity. They claimed they had repeatedly secure the participation of the author to This attitude was to a a disagreeable not three times the size of an ordinary screen, but was merely lost.' was was placed one shown with such success judicious cuts, but in vain. Gance, since illogical, said ensure that the version show n make all a tried to his one preoccupation was over the world corresponded with the in Paris, and in
