I loved the first three hours of this film. Pure cinematic joy. Then it inexplicably becomes all about Napoleon's romance with his first wife for some reason in the 4th hour. I'm thinking either the director or the lead actor or one of the backers must have been shtupping one of the actresses involved to get her a bigger part for that segment.
shareI think it was part of Gance's original master plan for this story. He was going to show the WHOLE of Napoleon's life; I can't remember if it was going to be a series of 3 or 5 movies. Anyway, I get the feeling that in this movie he was basically setting up some themes that were going to be further developed later on, and the Josephine story would be one of them.
Here in "Part 1", we see the joyous beginnings, but we know from history that things didn't continue that way. I don't know what approach he would have taken: was Josephine a weak link that failed, or was she a victim of Napoleon's ambition? Napoleon's life story is a rise and fall, after all. In the movie we have, we only see the rise. Later on would have come the clouds and darkness, and I don't know if Gance would have treated Napoleon himself as a victim, or as a fatally flawed hero. Having built up the romance with such exuberance, I think Gance would have treated its crumbling with equal importance.
Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!