Word: napoleons
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...Jamie, Wyeth readied himself for the real reason for his visit: his induction into the prestigious Academic des Beaux-Arts. Only the second American painter to receive the honor-the first was John Singer Sargent-Wyeth gamely spruced up in the member's uniform, a style decreed by Napoleon: a dress suit richly embroidered with gold. "Splendid," beamed the artist, tucking the traditional bicorne under his arm. "I'll wear it to every dinner party...
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...
Unfortunately, Richardson analyzes only one side of the complex Hugo-the bad side. Where two interpretations of the man's intentions are available, she chooses the unflattering. On the basis of one antagonistic witness, for instance, she argues that Hugo first turned on Louis Napoleon because he was not offered a suitable Cabinet post. In her discussion of Notre Dame de Paris, she observes how "[Hugo] presents the rabble with the gusto and the crudity of Breughel." Anyone who can turn Breughel into a pejorative cannot judge ordinary artists, much less Olympic...
...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...