{"id":14147,"date":"2012-03-18T10:42:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T14:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14147"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:09:41","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:09:41","slug":"can-there-ever-be-a-canonical-release-of-abel-gances-napoleon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/18\/can-there-ever-be-a-canonical-release-of-abel-gances-napoleon\/","title":{"rendered":"Can there ever be a “canonical” release of Abel Gance’s Napoleon<\/em>?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manohla Dargis<\/a> charts the incredibly rocky history of Abel Gance\u2019s silent masterpiece Napoleon<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

SOON after Abel Gance\u2019s \u201cNapoleon\u201d had its premiere in Paris in 1927, he wrote a letter to his audience, soliciting open eyes and hearts. \u201cI have made,\u201d he wrote, \u201ca tangible effort toward a somewhat richer and more elevated form of cinema.\u201d He had created a film towering in ambition, scale, cost, narrative and technical innovations, and believed that nothing less than \u201cthe future of the cinema\u201d was at stake. His audacity had merit. The origins of the widescreen image can be traced to \u201cNapoleon,\u201d which also featured hand-held camerawork, eye-blink-fast editing, gorgeous tints, densely layered superimpositions and images shot from a pendulum, a sled, a bicycle and a galloping horse. <\/p>\n

The film was an astonishment, and it was doomed. One hurdle was its length \u2014 his early versions ran from 3 hours to 6 hours 28 minutes (down from 9 hours) \u2014 while other difficulties were posed by Gance\u2019s advances, specifically a process later called Polyvision that extended the visual plane into a panorama or three separate images and that required three screens to show it. Partly as a consequence, distributors and exhibitors took harsh liberties: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cut it down to around 70 minutes for the American release, a butchering that seemed to encourage bad reviews. Gance continued to rework the film, adding sound for a 1935 version and, decades later, new material. Yet even as he was taking it apart, others \u2014 notably the British historian Kevin Brownlow \u2014 were trying to restore \u201cNapoleon\u201d to its original glory.<\/p>\n

In truth \u201cNapoleon,\u201d as it was initially hailed, no longer exists, which raises ticklish questions about authorship. In his book on the film, Mr. Brownlow lists 19 versions of \u201cNapoleon\u201d \u2014 including those created by distributors, Gance and Mr. Brownlow himself, who for decades has tried to restore the long-lost full version.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s almost a metaphysical question: how can you re-create the “original” when even the creator was busy re-shaping it at every stage along the way? George Lucas looks like an arch-conservator in comparison to Gance’s efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manohla Dargis charts the incredibly rocky history of Abel Gance\u2019s silent masterpiece Napoleon: SOON after Abel Gance\u2019s \u201cNapoleon\u201d had its premiere in Paris in 1927, he wrote a letter to his audience, soliciting open eyes and hearts. \u201cI have made,\u201d he wrote, \u201ca tangible effort toward a somewhat richer and more elevated form of cinema.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1117,7,28,15],"tags":[86,122,1009],"class_list":["post-14147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-history","category-media","category-technology","tag-criticism","tag-movies","tag-napoleon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Gb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29383,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14147\/revisions\/29383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}