It takes cojones the size of cannonballs to make a film based on the tumultuous life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only will you be following in the deep footsteps of Abel Gance’s five-and-a-half-hour Napoléon (1927) and Sergei Bondarchuk’s seven-hour War and Peace (1966/7) – two of the masterpieces of cinema – but you’re daring to tread where the great Stanley Kubrick failed.
After conquering the stars with 2001: A Space Odyssey, the visionary filmmaker famously set out to make his Napoleon film. He read extensively. He scouted far-flung locations. And he cajoled the Romanian People’s Army into committing 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 cavalrymen for the battle scenes.
