Word: napoleons
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LIKE A REVELATION that appears of its own will out of nothing, Abel Gance's 1927 film Napoleon flickers into the screen and at once flies directly into the face of the current taste in art. Not "bleak" or "austere" or "minimal" like so much of what is now published, produced, painted or composed, Napoleon is exuberantly romantic. Modernism dictates that the artist's "message" be wrapped in puzzles and conundrums. Napoleon is explicit: "From now on I am the French Revolution," Bonaparte declares, and there are no secondary or tertiary meanings implicit in the statement. Symbolism here...
When one looks beyond the style of the delivery and sees the message itself, it is not less, but more outrageous. What are to us abstract ideas, things for conversation, are the absolute truths in Napoleon. First, it is a panegyric to the transcendent man, he who honestly commands fate rather than obeys it. Yet Napoleon goes still farther and develops into a four-and-a-half hour monument to nationalism--that thoroughly obscene word--and concludes in a sweeping millenial vision. All France will find redemption in this one, unlikely man. It smell of wild irrationality, even fascism...
...works. It succeeds to the point of mesmerization. One is not necessarily convinced by Napoleon, yet one cannot help but be taken in by it. For a silent film originally released 54 years ago--and for all intents and purposes lost for all those years--to reappear in a different world and have this kind of power is perhaps what the phrase "enduring artistic vision" actually means...
...GRANDEUR is all there. From the moment the young Napoleon appears on the screen in a snowball fight at military school, his face displays an extraordinary intensity. Childish only in body, he is a being apart from those around him, probably since birth. The pride and disdain in his eyes betray a spirit that will not so much mature as it will expand...
...couldn't tell you Missing it could be worse than missing the 60s, but I really don't know. If the critics who have written reams about Napoleon are right, then it must be the cultural event of the year. But how could it be if virtually no one will get to see it during one of the six prohibitively expensive (tickets from $12.50 to 22.50) showings at the Metropolitan Center? The only thing certain is that Napoleon is going to be the first movie ever to have more articles written about it thant there will be people...