Word: napoleons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Biographer Joanna Richardson, a British specialist in 19th century French authors, shows that it was politics more than literature that made Hugo a living myth. After Louis Napoleon Bonaparte betrayed the republic in his 1851 coup d' état, the writer, originally a Bonaparte supporter, raged against the new emperor from exile. When Napoleon III finally fell in 1870, Olympic returned a hero...
HISTORIANS DELUDE THEMSELVES. Chroniclers of crowded battlefields claim to be citing causes, all the while knowing that they can be certain only of enumerating events. In War and Peace, Napoleon claims that what happens is "destiny when I can guide it, chance when it slips through my fingers," and the historian believes him. But, Tolstoy implies in his epic novel, chance--and the random effect it has on the lives of millions of people--is history's major determining factor. The victory at Borodino towards the end of the novel belongs to the aging Russian general Kutuzov not because...
...director Norman Ayrton's credit that throughout most of the two and a half hours of War and Peace, the historian's illusion of control is sustained. By coloring the play's war scenes with two large slide screens that at times trace Napoleon's progress across the map of Europe and at times stain the background with a dull blood red, Ayrton gives the soldiers' disordered flights a suggestive significance beyond the mere chronicling of events. And by frequently isolating the characters at opposite ends of the stages, Ayrton lends to the few joint tableaux an emotional compression that...
Most of the other actors skillfully manipulate their minor roles with characteristic panache. Sarah McClusky's bubbling Countess Rostova is particularly entertaining as is Tom Myers'' self-important Napoleon Bonaparte. Chris Clemenson squeezes the wisdom of General Kutuzov from a wonderfully wizened frame. And John Blazo as the soldier Kuragin easily seduces Natasha with a slickness worthy of the serpent in the garden...
...like working for Napoleon. She's a great general," says Actress Candice Bergen of her latest director, Lino Wertmuller. Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini are in Rome filming A Night Full of Rain, Wertmuller's first movie in English. To make it, Wertmuller says, is like "flying blind." Giannini spent six months studying the language for his part as an English-speaking Italian journalist. As for Bergen, cast as a former American college radical who falls in love with Giancarlo, she has different language problems. "At this point, my English is beginning to break up," she says. "I find...