Abel Gance’s “Napoleon,” the most inventive and exuberant movie spec- tacle from the twilight of silent films, is booked for two matinee screenings at the American Film Institute Theater’s Kennedy Center auditorium today and tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. The event might be regarded as a belated 75th anniversary salute to the movie itself, which enjoyed a dazzling debut at the Paris Opera House in April 1927. These performances may also conclude the end of an era for the AFI as a Kennedy Center tenant.
The auditorium, originally subsidized by movie mogul Jack L. Warner, became known as the AFI National Theatre. The backstage space it has occupied will soon be renovated into a permanent children’s theater. It remains to be seen if the AFI, which transferred most of its programming to the new AFI Silver Theatre triplex in Silver Spring in 2003, will return with some frequency to Kennedy Center. In recent years, occasional film programs have alternated with productions of the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in the AFI site, located just inside the entrance to the Hall of States.
If this weekend qualifies as a swan song, “Napoleon” is always a whale of a send-off attraction. It was the pretext for a far more conspicuous revival in February 1982, when the Kennedy Center Opera House was fitted with a custom-made screen and a bank of projectors in the box-seat tier. Two weeks of screenings were accompanied by a 60-piece symphonic orchestra, with the late Carmine Coppola conducting the score he had composed for a daunting silent classic, which cried out for a rousing accompaniment that could last four hours. The score and the musicians kept faith with Mr. Gance’s tumultuous and lyric imagery — spelled by an organist at half-hour stretches before and after the intermission.
It’s a pity “Napoleon” cannot be revived as both scenic spectacle and live symphonic concert on every occasion. The current showings rely on a 35 mm print with tinted sequences and the Coppola score, recorded by the composer/conductor with the Milan Philharmonic Orchestra. This should suffice as an introduction to a flamboyant landmark of the screen.Mr. Gance’s inclination is to give the audience a lot of movie from sequence to sequence or shot to shot, so it’s difficult to feel cheated by any exposure to his superabundance of gusto and showmanship.
It might be difficult to duplicate the receptive climate that existed for “Napoleon” in the early 1980s. The gratifying rediscovery of its dynamic charms and grandeur seemed to justify a generation or two of avid enthusiasm for neglected classics and film preservation.
Could the same enthusiasm and sense of anticipation be rallied at this juncture? Evidently, no one cares to test the water.
The creation of the AFI itself reflected the sort of devotion to the medium and its historical heritage that led eventually to a fond and splashy restoration of “Napoleon.”A wave of revival bookings in the United States began with showings at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in January of 1981. They had been anticipated a few years earlier by a historic open-air screening at the Telluride Film Festival. The full-blown Radio City event validated the efforts of three men in particular: producer Francis Ford Coppola, film historian Kevin Brownlow and restorer-distributor Robert A. Harris.
“Napoleon” had been a cinematic Holy Grail for Mr. Brownlow, who acquired fragments of the movie as a boyhood collector of footage in a 9.5 mm gauge intended for home projection.Two electrifying scenes — from an early sequence depicting the National Assembly during the French Revolution — provoked further exploration. Mr. Gance was a legend in retirement when Mr. Brownlow became aware of him in the 1950s.
The filmmaker died in 1981, at age 92, but he was able to relish the movie’s rediscovery. In fact, Telluride made its reputation in part by inviting Mr. Gance to attend its showing of the movie in 1978.
Sweeping and spectacular as it is, “Napoleon” represented only a fraction of Mr. Gance’s original epic conception. He had envisioned a six-film cycle tracing Napoleon from military school in Brienne to exile on St. Helena. Ultimately, he had to be content with the first installment, which concentrates on the political turmoil of the Revolution, Napoleon’s emergence as a daring commander during the siege of Toulon, romance with Josephine and the conquest of Austrian-occupied Italy.
Abel Gance had directed a quartet of ambitious and successful movies as a preamble to “Napoleon,” which began production in 1925. He never enjoyed such a grandiose creative opportunity again. Despite the promising Parisian debut, “Napoleon” proved at once a great accomplishment and a professional Waterloo.
Having demonstrated his ability to break the bounds of popular filmmaking, economically as well as artistically, Mr. Gance was kept on a short financial leash by French producers. Indeed, “Napoleon” was initially financed by a German industrialist and ultimately bailed out by a Russian.
At full tilt, the project spurred Mr. Gance to astonishing innovative feats. He invented a triple-screen projection system, Polyvision, that anticipated Cinerama by almost 30 years. It was exploited during the finale for poetic as well as picturesque effects, with some compositions designed as a triptych and others utilizing the entire panoramic breadth of the three screens.
He experimented repeatedly with multiple images, juxtaposed or superimposed in expressive ways. Breathtaking, torrential rhythmic patterns obviously had an irresistible hold on him, but his command of potentially diffuse and abstract imagery remained impressive and stimulating.
Mr. Gance participated in several revisions of the movie, including a 1934 digest that added spoken dialogue. Most of the original actors were still available for the dubbing, including Antonin Artaud as Marat and Mr. Gance himself as St. Just. He also shot a special introduction for a partial restoration in the early 1970s titled “Bonaparte and the Revolution.” He provided a personal testament as vivid and impassioned as the original movie itself: “The cinema is a flame in the shadows fed by enthusiasm, the great conductor of life. Luckily, I still have mine. Help me preserve it.”
****
TITLE: “Napoleon”
RATING: No MPAA Rating (originally released in 1927, decades before the advent of a rating system; simulated combat violence in war scenes)
CREDITS: Written and directed by Abel Gance. Restored version supervised by Kevin Brownlow. Principal photographers: Jules Kruger, Leonce-Henry Burel, Roger Hubert, Emile Pierre, Jean-Pierre Mundviller. Production design and art direction by Alexandre Benois and Pierre Schildknecht. Editing supervised by Marguerite Beauge. Music for restored version composed and conducted by Carmine Coppola
RUNNING TIME: 235 minutes MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
Please read our comment policy before commenting.