Napoleon (1954)
Napoleon is a French-Italian monumental film from 1954 about the most important stages in Napoleon Bonaparte's life . Directed by Sacha Guitry, it played the greatest cast of stars a French film has ever seen.
action
“Napoleon has died!” so goes the news that soon spreads like wildfire across Paris. The old, experienced statesman Talleyrand, servant of many French masters for the past 40 years, sits with friends and looks back on the power-hungry and unscrupulous ruler he has known like no other. For the next three hours, Napoleon's life drifts by as if in a picture arc, from his birth in Corsica in 1769 to his shameful end as a prisoner of the British crown on St. Helena. Station after station his vita is examined: the difficult years of childhood, the training at the military academy in Brienne, the engagement in Toulon to Désirée Clary, his first arrival in Paris. There the young Bonaparte meets Joséphine de Beauharnais, who is to become his wife in 1796. In the same year there was the battle of Arcole with the Austrians, in which General Bonaparte was able to prove himself for the first time as a tactically savvy general. His successful campaigns in Egypt underline his young fame and make Bonaparte a national hero nationwide. With his appointment as the first consul of the republic, Napoleon gains de facto sole rule over France. In December 1804 he was crowned Emperor of the French.
There followed battles after battles, victories after victories: Ulm, Austerlitz, Preussisch Eylau, Wagram, Aspern. In addition, the French emperor also finds time for love affairs and romances. The daughter of the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Marie-Louise of Austria, becomes his second wife and Éléonore Denuelle becomes his lover. Another love affair with Maria Walewska, a Polish countess, results in a child. The Polish woman's hope that Napoleon will bring her enslaved homeland independence at the same time, however, is disappointed. After his loss-making advance into the heart of Russia, Napoleon's fortunes turned, his army bleeds to death in the endless expanse of the tsarist empire and suffered further heavy losses when retreating through Prussia. Finally, he went into exile for the first time on the island of Elba, followed by an attempt to regain control under the rule of the Hundred Days by returning to mainland France . In the Battle of Waterloo , Napoleon experienced his final defeat and was banished by the British to the island of St. Helena, where he died lonely and bitter in 1821.
Production notes
Napoleon was filmed from June 14th to October 30th, 1954. The original three-hour spectacle was premiered on March 25, 1955 and was also shown in Germany from March 30, 1956. There the film was extremely shortened to 105 minutes. After his gorgeous picture sheet about France's splendor and glory of the 18th century, Versailles - Kings and Women (1953), Guitry tried with his new, ambitious large-scale production to trump the film picture sheet from the previous year in terms of both appearance and dimensions.
Many pictures were taken of (mainly French) original locations like Castle Malmaison , Fontainebleau Castle and Palace of Versailles . The battlefields of Austerlitz and Waterloo are also said to have been filming locations.
Ghislain Cloquet assisted chief cameraman Pierre Montazel . René Renoux created the film structures. The countless historical costumes were designed by Monique Dunan, Paulette Coquatrix and Jacques Cottin. The 17-year-old Sami Frey made his film debut here with a tiny role.
Director Guitry played again the statesman Talleyrand, whom he had portrayed in his 1948 film The Limping Devil . OW Fischer and Maria Schell , the lovers of German film in the 1950s, stood together in front of the camera in this production (without having a common scene).
Lana Marconi, who embodies Maria Walewska, was Guitry's wife at the time.
The appearances of numerous other stars fell victim to the scissors. In order not to let the film get any longer, the scenes with the following well-known contributors have been removed from the French original version:
- Françoise Arnoul . She played a girl in the royal palace
- Eleonora Rossi Drago . She played Pauline Fourès
- Raymond Bussières . He played Raoul Passementier
- Corinne Calvet . She played Madame Récamier
- Fernand Ledoux . He played Lazare Carnot
- Gaby Morlay . She played Madame de Blanchetière
- Silvana Pampanini . She played the opera singer “La Grassini”
synchronization
First synchronization
The following are the German voices of the original synchronization made by Wolfgang Wehrum in 1956:
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Napoleon | Raymond Pellegrin | Arno Assmann |
| Bonaparte | Daniel Gélin | Arno Assmann |
| Talleyrand | Sacha Guitry | Walter Holten |
| Josephine de Beauhernais | Michèle Morgan | Eleanor Noelle |
| Marie-Louise of Austria | Maria Schell | Maria Schell |
| Eleanor Denuelle | Danielle Darrieux | Eva Maria Meineke |
| Count of Montholon | Jean Marais | John Pauls-Harding |
| Barras | Pierre Brasseur | Werner Lieven |
| Bourrienne | Bernard Dhéran | Ernst Fritz Fürbringer |
Second synchronization
The following are the German voices of the new dubbing made by Werner Uschkurat in 1971:
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Napoleon | Raymond Pellegrin | Hans-Michael Rehberg |
| Bonaparte | Daniel Gélin | Hans-Michael Rehberg |
| Talleyrand | Sacha Guitry | Robert Klupp |
| Josephine de Beauhernais | Michèle Morgan | Eva Pflug |
| Marie-Louise of Austria | Maria Schell | Maria Schell |
| Eleanor Denuelle | Danielle Darrieux | Karin Kernke |
| Désirée Clary | Dany Robin | Gudrun Vaupel |
| Murat | Henri Vidal | Wolfgang Hess |
| Count of Montholon | Jean Marais | Horst Naumann |
| Marshal Lefebvre | Yves Montand | Harald Juhnke |
| Marshal Lannes | Jean Gabin | Horst W. Krause |
| Hortense de Beauharnais | Micheline Presle | Petra Unkel |
| Lucien Bonaparte | Serge Reggiani | Manfred Schott |
| Hudson Lowe | Orson Welles | Walter Reichelt |
| Caulaincourt | Roger Pigaut | Hans Quest |
This first television broadcast took place at prime time (8:15 p.m.) on ARD on Easter Monday, April 12, 1971.
Reviews
“The aged causeur Sacha Guitry wrote and staged his Napoleon biography as patriotic as it was defiant, but hardly witty or even entertaining. The original locations of history were visited and famous paintings in Eastman color were imitated. World stars take part in tiny episode roles, if not as extras. Almost only the Corsican's victories came into the picture and at least the heroic aspects of his defeats. Shortly after the Egypt campaign, Napoleon surprisingly shrank and exchanged his long skull for a ball head. At this point, Raymond Pellegrin took over the lead role from Daniel Gélin, an experiment that could only fail with two actors of about the same age but so different in appearance. "
In the lexicon of international films it says: “A huge fresco with the polished texts of the subtle formulator Guitry, a super production with all the actors who were famous in France at the time. Colorful, overly long (in the original 183 minutes!) And in places involuntarily funny. "
"In the 1950s Guitry occasionally refrained from staging his own plays and filmed, in the greatest splendor, historical picture arches of great display value, which uncritically celebrated France's splendor and glory and French imperialism of the 17th to 19th centuries, such as" Versailles - Kings and Women "and" Napoleon "."
“Official fame came over him again like a halo with Si Versailles m'était conté (1954), Napoléon (1955), Si Paris nous était conté (1956) , heavy machinery, actors' parades that, at times, bordered on boredom . "
Web links
- Napoleon in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Claude Sabria: Cinéma français. Les années 50. Paris 1987, no.632
- ^ Synchronized voices for Napoleon
- ^ Synchronized voices for Napoleon
- ↑ Napoleon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 28, 2015 .