To the laments of military historians about the accuracy of Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon, one could add some about the architecture. Christopher Wren’s Royal Naval College in Greenwich gets digitally spliced with classical architecture from France and Malta, so they all look as if they are in the same place, while Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire gets to represent both Paris and Moscow.
But such complaints miss the point. The film is entertainment – to expect factual precision is like going to Macbeth for an informative lecture on Scottish history. And, as in any lavishly produced period drama, there’s a problem with the fourth wall: even if the costumes and settings and turns of phrase were completely of their time, such authenticity would still jar with the awareness that it’s recorded with state-of-the-art, 21st-century technology.
