“With more than 700 appearances of Napoleon on the big screen and around 350 on television, the emperor is one of the most represented historical figures on screen” Historian and film critic Antoine de Baek comments.
As for the books, the figure is undoubtedly more charming. In 2014, the historian Jean Tullard, one of the foremost specialists on the subject, put the astronomical (and unspecified) number of 80,000 works published on Napoleon; more than one a day since his birth in Ajaccio in 1769.
It is not easy to build an ambitious work on a character. Stanley Kubrick worked on it for years before withdrawing from the MGM project, scared off by the failure of the Waterloo theaters; Especially unfair indeed.
To say that Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is divisive is an understatement. Between supporters of the director’s claimed artistic and fictional liberties and historians (at least some of them) who cringe at some of the director’s problematic, not to mention heretical, choices, critical material is particularly abundant. What does it matter to Scott, who torpedoes the unkind criticism of his film, especially from French critics.
Nevertheless, it is primarily an artistic vision – one’s own. Which does not prevent us from making – very short – a small inventory of more or less accepted ideas about the theses or biases mentioned in the film, in opposition to reality, compiled in our video to discover below.
Anyway, Scott’s film seems to be suffering at the international box office. In the US, the film has grossed just over $45.7 million so far, and even saw a 66% drop in attendance in its second week of release, with a Beyoncé-filmed concert taking in $21 million. to 7.1 million for the Emperor.
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
