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Ridley Scott is one of the great figures of British and world cinema. In 1979, he made a grotesque creature burst from the stomach of John Hurt in Alien. Three years later his Blade Runner created a vision of a dystopian future that inspired a generation of computer gamers. Other hits came thick and fast with Thelma & Louise in 1991 and Gladiator – starring Russell Crowe – in 2000. He remains extremely busy and, over the last 20 years, has directed at least one film a year, including Black Hawk Down, The Martian, and House of Gucci. His eye for a brilliant shot and a tight, dramatic storyline is legendary.
Now aged 85, Scott has directed another blockbuster, a movie he has wanted to make for decades: Napoleon. For this latest spectacle, David Scarpa has provided the script. He and Scott worked together on All the Money in the World in 2017, a film about the kidnapping of young John Paul Getty III and the refusal of his billionaire grandfather to pay the ransom.
Scott has been quoted in interviews saying that he does not care what historians have to say and that he never looks to them for advice when making films. Apparently, when faced with criticism from a historian, he asked: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well shut the f*** up then!’. Frankly, it shows.
There is a great obsession with getting minor details correct, but very little in trying to understand Napoleon, his ambitions, his hopes for France, or the immense reforms he brought in – the Napoleonic Code marked a rewriting of French legal principles. Was he a tyrant or did he just seek law and order after a period of revolutionary ferment? Did he become a European dictator to seek personal power or because he tried to bring universal values to the entire continent?
If you are interested in asking any of these questions, don’t look to this film for answers. If you want to know more about Napoleon’s relationship with Joséphine, however, it’s for you.
Convincing performances
Joaquin Phoenix is the star of this film. He first worked with Scott in Gladiator, and more recently played a series of dark characters including the Joker in the 2019 film of the same name, for which he won an Academy Award. He looks great as Napoleon, with a convincing hairstyle and a broody, dominating appearance. His eyes captivate and enchant. Scott initially cast Jodie Comer (star of Killing Eve and The Last Duel) to play the part of Joséphine, but she had to pull out because of a scheduling clash. So Vanessa Kirby took on the role instead. She had been a magnificent Princess Margaret in early episodes of The Crown, and does her best here with a difficult part. At times, she is not only subservient to Napoleon but is bullied and beaten by him. At other moments, she is the one in control.
Much of the film is told through their relationship: their first meetings and courtship, their marriage, his rise to the position of Emperor with her as Empress, their divorce, and her enforced exile at the Château de Malmaison outside Paris. Many of his letters to her are read in the form of a voiceover. He was exuberant in his expressions of love. Although he had several mistresses during their relationship, it is clear that his first and strongest love was for Joséphine. But she never replied to his letters in the same vein. Her replies were far fewer and much less emotional. However, after her death, her invented letters to him are ingenious and poignant.
The main narrative of the movie begins with the execution at the guillotine of Marie Antoinette in October 1793 at the height of the Terror. It’s a good, vivid start to the film that sets the viewer up for much more blood and gore to come. At the time, Napoleon Bonaparte is a Corsican artillery officer in the French army. His Corsican roots and ambivalent attitude towards France and its revolution in his younger days are never explored in the film.
The first major action scenes come two months later after Paul Barras, a key figure in the post-revolution Directory government, asks Napoleon to capture the port town of Toulon. It is occupied by royalists and the British fleet is moored there. The battle for Toulon was a crucial engagement. The French fleet was still the third biggest in Europe, and Britannia at this point did not yet rule the waves in the way she would after Trafalgar. Sinking the British fleet would be a substantial victory. And had Toulon held out as a royalist stronghold, it would have destabilised the newly formed republic, and French hopes of uniting the nation would have suffered a substantial setback.
Simplified action
In the movie, Napoleon arrives to find the republican army in a dreadful state, with morale low and its equipment in appalling decay. He revives the spirits of the men and forges new cannon for the artillery. Still only a colonel, the real Bonaparte struggled with the senior republican officers, who were incompetent. The film dramatises just one event in what was actually more than three months of siege, when the French creep up on the British fortress at night while British soldiers are boozing, and carry out a successful assault. This allows them to open fire on the enemy ships in the harbour. Like much of the rest of the film, complex events are reduced to one single decisive action. Still splattered with blood, Napoleon is made a Brigadier-General by Barras in the aftermath of the battle. He was only 24 years old. Bonaparte’s ascent has begun.
Back in Paris, the Reign of Terror comes to an end and prisoners are freed, including Joséphine de Beauharnais, the widow of an army general who had been guillotined for having failed to defend Mainz during the siege of 1793. Napoleon spots her at the Survivors Ball, a truly bizarre event, supposedly held after the end of the Terror in which play actors satirised the deaths of their family members while everyone partied. Napoleon gets to know Joséphine, and she tells him of her previous indiscretions – then seduces him. Not that he needs much encouragement.
The movie then gallops on through Napoleon’s rise to power. The next step is when he fires on the Paris mob in the royalist insurrection of October 1795, showing him to be determined, brutal, and not afraid of inflicting violence on those deemed to be his enemies.
The film misses out the Italian Campaign altogether, jumping to his expedition to Egypt in 1798. It has him shelling the Pyramids, which he never did. Again, his military enterprises are compromised by his love life when he is told that Joséphine has taken a lover. He rushes back to Paris and a series of intense scenes follow. He tells Joséphine: ‘You are nothing without me’ and ‘You are a selfish little pig.’ But then, later, she gets him to repeat the same words to her about himself. It’s clear he cannot live without her. But it is not the case that she cannot live without him.
After he becomes First Consul in 1799, several years pass. Napoleon tries to isolate Austria and then Britain from their allies. He shouts at the British ambassador: ‘You think you are so great because you have boats!’ Apparently, Scott is very proud of this moment, but when I saw it, the audience burst out laughing at the line.
Lavish scenes
Throughout the movie, the photography is simply stunning. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski lights intimate conversations as though they are classical paintings. And the array of grand palaces which the new leaders of France inhabit are not only splendid but remind the viewer that, despite the revolution and the abolition of the aristocracy, nothing much has changed.
This leads to Napoleon being offered sovereignty. At first, he laughs at the idea, but then we see his coronation as Emperor in Notre-Dame in December 1804. In one of the most lavish scenes of the movie, with Phoenix dressed exactly as Napoleon appears in the famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, in flowing red robes and wearing a golden laurel wreath. Although the ceremony was officiated by Pope Pius VII, Napoleon took the crown and placed it on his own head to show that he, and not the Church, represented the supreme power in France. He then crowned Joséphine as Empress.
‘You are the only chance of peace,’ Napoleon is told, ‘and this depends upon an heir.’ But Joséphine and he do not produce a child. Their marriage becomes increasingly fractious, and eventually leads to a divorce, with a public declaration that their relationship ‘has become an obstacle to the prosperity of France’. In tears, Joséphine, who has now come to love Napoleon as much as he loves her, signs the declaration, and is sent off to live in further splendour in the Château de Malmaison.
Meanwhile, Napoleon turns to fight the Austrians, now allied with Russia. Once again, a complex war narrative, involving the building up of the Grande Armée of 350,000 men, and the Ulm Campaign, resulting in the surrender of 23,000 Austrian soldiers in November 1805, is simplified into a single engagement in the Battle of Austerlitz in December that year. This battle is rich in spectacle, particularly because of one incident at the Satschan frozen ponds, where French cannonballs broke the ice and Russian soldiers and their artillery slid into the freezing water. But the nature of Napoleon’s genius in defeating a foe superior in numbers will remain a mystery to viewers.
There are still a few more battles to go. In 1812, Napoleon leads his Grande Armée, now inflated to 600,000 men, into Russia. After victory at Borodino, he enters Moscow, but finds the city deserted. He is woken by the sound of buildings on fire. Intensely frustrated that the Tsar has ordered the destruction of his own city, Napoleon vows to march on St Petersburg. But his generals advise him to return. The retreat proves catastrophic, as his soldiers – exhausted, hungry, frozen, and with disease rampant – die in vast numbers. Only 40,000 men return to France. Now in disgrace, Napoleon is exiled to Elba.
But, of course, in 1815 he returns. The final battle – probably the most magnificent of all in filmic terms – takes place at Waterloo. With the Prussians and the Russians not yet having arrived, Napoleon attacks the British army led by the Duke of Wellington (an angry but distinguished Rupert Everett). As the French cavalry charge, the British infantry take up their positions in squares, and the effectiveness of this is clearly shown in the film.
Finally, Napoleon is exiled to St Helena where, as he muses on his past and dreams of Joséphine (who has since died of diphtheria), children play and tell him about his own battles.
Historical accuracy
In France, Napoleon has inevitably proved controversial. To some, an Englishman making a film about the greatest Frenchman is an outrage. Long lists of errors have been circulated. But elsewhere the film’s release has prompted screenings where the audience turn up in Napoleonic-era costume to discuss his legacy with historians.
The film is really little more than a skate through Napoleon’s many military campaigns, such as Toulon, Egypt, Austerlitz, Borodino, the retreat from Moscow, and finally Waterloo. These majestic set-piece battle sequences are counterpointed by the intimate scenes with Joséphine. It’s a sort of Ladybird Book – or maybe Mills & Boon – guide to Napoleon’s career. To Scott, Napoleon is another ‘superhero’.
Despite the length of the film, at more than two-and-a-half hours, there is no subtlety to David Scarpa’s script when it comes to military or political affairs. Only in the depiction of Napoleon’s love life is there any nuance. Although many historical faults have been chronicled, in the main that’s irrelevant: Scott aspires to emotional, not historical accuracy.
In terms of spectacle, however, the movie is second to none, especially in awesome IMAX as I saw it. For grand and epic late 18th-/early 19th-century battle scenes there is nothing to compare. Scott uses a mixture of live action with hundreds of extras, imaginative drone shots to portray the battle from above, and cleverly integrated CGI. All of this is filmed on broad and dramatic landscapes. On several occasions, in different battles, the viewer can feel the full force of infantry and cavalry charges, and is almost thrown into the midst of bayonet advances and hand-to-hand combat.
The film is worth seeing for all of this. And there is no doubt that Napoleon was a great general for much of his military career. But don’t look for any understanding of him as a broader, more complete figure, or for an insight into his role in history. That’s not what Ridley Scott wanted to explore here, and as a viewer it’s not what you are going to get.
Napoleon on Film
The life of the French emperor has inspired many film-makers over the years. In 1927, the great Parisian director Abel Gance produced a masterpiece. When writing his massive script of Napoleon’s life, he intended to make six separate films chronicling his youth to the final exile on St Helena. He retreated to Fontainebleau Palace to write the script, where apparently he felt the spirit of Napoleon himself. When Gance let it be known that he wanted actors who not only looked the part but were the part, Albert Dieudonné turned up in a Napoleonic costume and convinced the caretaker that he was the emperor’s ghost. Gance was stunned, and Dieudonné got the job at the first audition.
Gance went on to make a five-hour spectacle on Napoleon’s life but, in terms of story, only got as far as his invasion of Italy in 1796. After that, Gance ran out of money. Still, his film was innovative: Gance frequently took his camera off the tripod and mounted it on the backs of horses, on sledges, and on pendulums swinging over shouting crowds. Nearly a century on, it remains a silent classic and includes many iconic moments, such as when three cameras side by side create a triptych of Napoleon invading Italy, tinted in the colours of the tricolour. This silent epic was restored some 40 years ago by film historian Kevin Brownlow, with an orchestral soundtrack composed by Carl Davis as accompaniment.
In more recent times, Stanley Kubrick prepared a detailed scenario of a film about Napoleon, and Steven Spielberg planned his own epic. But neither went into production.
There have been many films that feature Napoleon, including The Young Mr Pitt, a 1942 propaganda film about Britain rallying to confront a European tyrant, in which Herbert Lom played the French emperor; and perhaps most memorably Waterloo, the 1970 epic in which Christopher Plummer plays Wellington and Rod Steiger his opponent on the battlefield. Nothing, however, except perhaps Gance’s classic, can compare with Ridley Scott’s new film.
NAPOLEON
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Written by David Scarpa.
Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
