Word: napoleon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Kubrick turned to Barry Lyndon after a projected biography of Napoleon proved too complex and expensive even for him. He reread the novel several times, "looking for traps, making sure it was do-able." With typically elaborate caution, he got Warners' backing on the basis of an outline in which names, places and dates were changed so no one could filch from him a story in the public domain. He then settled down to work on script and research. The latter may be, for him, the more important undertaking. "Stanley is voracious for information. He wants glorious choice," says...
...NAPOLEON by WILL and ARIEL DURANT 872 pages. Simon & Schuster...
...Napoleon focuses on one of the most complex and ideologically riven epochs in history. Unfortunately, it is a period that fits awkwardly into the Durants' Procrustean formula. Merely to introduce Bonaparte into destiny's pages requires a recapitulation of the entire French Revolution. The Durants compress that cataclysm to 152 pages-an entertaining but misshapen account. The causes of the infamous Terror are summed up in a brief section, leaving the reader reeling under a scattershot assault of dates and statistics. The guillotine devours French leaders at such a bewildering pace that the list of names often reads...
Vivid Portrait. The question of whether Napoleon was a Corsican, a Frenchman or the first true European leader evokes a vivid Durant portrait...
...Italian made skeptical by Voltaire, subtle by the ruses of survival in the Revolution, sharp by the daily duel of French intellects." The historians dis play such artistry too sparingly. Still, these most popular popularists are incapable of writing a dull book or a trivial one. The Age of Napoleon is not their best book, but it is their last. Readers can mourn that statement - and celebrate the fact that the Durants have contributed so much to the American under standing of that most foreign country, the past...