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| A portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte; Stanley Kubrick directing 'Barry Lyndon' (1975). |
-Stanley Kubrick on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
For all my articles in ‘Film Analysis’ so far, there is one aspect in common – these films all exist in this world. This time, I would like to talk about a film that has never existed. Why bother to waste time talking about something that does not even stand in this world? It is because of that old saying - process is often more important than the outcome. And, if the undertaking is as rigorous, passionate, and intense as in the case of Stanley Kubrick, then this story is worthwhile like any of his other masterpieces. That never-existed film is the project Kubrick has sought to do throughout his life – ‘Napoleon’.
Kubrick has always been obsessed with the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, and one can easily appreciate why. Napoleon was known as a military genius, who worked very hard and devised very stunning military strategies, which led to his many successes in the era of what we now call ‘Napoleonic Wars’. Napoleon has lived his life to the fullest, and the confidence and charisma that radiated from this average-height person has made him one of the most iconic historical figures of all time. In a sense, Kubrick somehow resembled the character of Napoleon. Kubrick’s concentration in his craft – cinema, and the passion he has devoted to film making and the control and strategy he has devised to stage the perfect shots for his work, are no less intense than a Napoleonic battle. Kubrick is indeed fighting his own war to get the best artistic outcome!
After finishing ‘2001 : A Space Odyssey’, which was premiered eventually in 1968, Kubrick and his team started working on the Napoleon film. He intensely worked on this project in the late 1960s, and intended to finish and release this historical epic in the early 1970s. This is the perfect time to show such a great epic. Back in an age when special effects were not advanced enough to film large scale sequences, people would look up with awe if Kubrick could depict these battle scenes in an authentic manner. It is very much like ‘2001’, as the special effects presented in the sci-fi classic were almost without any precedent at that time. Imagine if ‘2001’ and ‘Napoleon’ are made in 2016, do you think these films will provide such an impact to the audience? With the advancement of computer-generated images nowadays, how hard is it to generate a 40,000 troop or a few flying Ferris wheels? Even a very average filmmaker can easily stage these scenes in an era of technological advancement. Thus, it can be said that ‘Napoleon’ has to exist in a defined time, and one can then easily understand why Kubrick would eventually abandon the project rather than pushing on it.
However, fate has dictated that Kubrick would never make his most ambitious film. Another film about a similar theme, ‘Waterloo ’ (1970), came out first and was a real fiasco. Thus, Kubrick’s studio bosses were nervous and they postponed his project, and Kubrick did not have any chances to make ‘Napoleon’ throughout the rest of his life.
Instead, Kubrick made 2 wonderful films in the 1970s – A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975). ‘Barry Lyndon’, which also took place in the 18th century, is particularly important here. Because Kubrick has used much of his preparatory work and techniques and translated the efforts into ‘Barry Lyndon’. Therefore, Barry Lyndon can be seen as a window into Kubrick’s vision of Napoleon, as many of the approaches in ‘Barry Lyndon’ were originally intended to be used in ‘Napoleon’. Barry Lyndon is the focus of my next couple of articles in the Kubrick series.
What did Kubrick want to achieve in his Napoleon film?
The prime concern for Kubrick in his version of Napoleon was a strenuous commitment to realism. A core value often treasured by the filmmaker, he would adopt an objective approach to the biographic sketch of this great military genius, and the depictions of all the key events in Napoleon’s life would come as close to reality as possible.
Certainly, one should not be over surprised that, among all the experiences Napoleon has ever encountered, the ones that have left lasting impressions in the future generations were the various battles Napoleon has been involved in. Napoleonic Wars were likely going to be the master stroke of Kubrick’s period epic, and, very much like the futuristic scenes in ‘2001’, these were going to be the scenes to see where Kubrick stood at the history of cinema. Battles of all scales are often complex, and the strategies employed are often difficult to understand for an ordinary member in the audience. In order to achieve accurate descriptions of the battles and the strategies involved, Kubrick has decided to include narration, and the use of maps, schemes, and paintings, besides the use of cinematic techniques to depict the battles.
Thus, one can consider Kubrick’s Napoleon to be some sort of a docudrama – a film with a strong documentary feel. This made total sense in the age when Kubrick was working on Napoleon – as it was an era when the use of cinéma vérité techniques was becoming increasingly popular in fiction films. Kubrick has been influenced by this documentary-inspired filmmaking style, and has already employed it in ‘Dr. Strangelove’. As a mater of fact, cinéma vérité techniques have also been used in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Barry Lyndon’.
In order to capture an intense sense of reality for the various battles, Kubrick felt that the details of the battles should go from the props and costumes all the way to the terrain. He felt that the factor of the terrain – ‘the ground’ when the battle took place – could potentially impact the flow of the troops and thus the strategies devised on both sides, hence influencing the final outcome of the battle.
A more technical preference for Kubrick was his intention to use natural lighting in both exterior and interior scenes for the film, to capture a period feel of the 18th century. This was quite a feat because, for the 18th century, an age when no electric lights were yet available, and illumination might require either sunlight or candle, the cinematic photographic technology available in the 1960s or 1970s were not powerful enough to capture these ‘available light source’ or under lit images without the help of additional electrical lighting setup. If Kubrick’s obsession meant that he would abandon electrical lighting totally in ‘Napoleon’, then it was going to be a really tough challenge. Facing with a similar problem at the time he made ‘Barry Lyndon’, Kubrick eventually succeeded in finding a monumental solution for that, and this will be discussed in my first article of ‘Barry Lyndon’.
What did Kubrick and his team do to realize ‘Napoleon’?
‘Wherever Napoleon went, I want you to go.’
– Kubrick to his assistant.
Known for his meticulous research into projects he has achieved – and has not realized, Kubrick’s work for Napoleon deserves a picture of its own. Other than reading hundreds of books about Napoleon, Kubrick has devised an extensive filing system to categorize all the information about the French emperor, and this was before the computer age. The filing system also included potential location photos and Napoleonic imageries. The result was a compilation of 25,000 library cards, with a size of 3 inches by 5 inches, containing all the information, major and minor, regarding the life of Napoleon.
In order to have a realistic feel about the battles, Kubrick and his team examined many paintings of that age, and those from subsequent eras, that portrayed Napoleonic battles. He has already employed this approach – through the examination of a single available photograph of a fighter jet – to stage the realistic fighter jet sequence in ‘Dr. Strangelove’ (1964), and he would adopt a similar approach when he made ‘Barry Lyndon’ later.
Because Kubrick desired to portray the Napoleonic battles as accurate as possible in a cinematic manner, therefore he had to make sure every component that comprised the final result was executed in the most perfect way possible. As mentioned, the terrain was important for the war, thus Kubrick has looked for possible locations that he could portray the battles. At the end, he was able to approximate and abstract a number of locations where he believed he could stage his version of the battles. As an example of Kubrick’s obsession, he even asked his assistant to bring back samples of soil from Waterloo , so that he could accurately match the correct color tone for his film. In a pre-CGI age, when one could not easily bloat up the scale by faking, Kubrick has tried to borrow some 50,000 men from the Romanian armies for the battle scenes, and he has planned to film his battles on various suitable locations, including France , Italy , and Yugoslavia .
How about the cast? That was just as stunning when compared to the more technical aspects of the project. Kubrick wanted either David Hemmings or Jack Nicholson to be his Napoleon, with Audrey Hepburn as Josephine, and veteran actors Alec Guinness and Laurence Olivier as supporting roles.
Kubrick has also watched a number of films about Napoleon Bonaparte and that era, including Abel Gance’s impressionistic ‘Napoleon’. However, he was not particularly impressed by any of them, and he felt he was able to do things better, and to make what he believed to be the greatest historical film of all time...
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by Ed Law
21/8/2016
Film Analysis - 68
