Napoleon

The life, loves, and military campaigns of Napoleon are brought to the screen in this opus from French stage and screen director-writer-actor Sacha Guitry. Not the masterpiece that Abel Gance's silent NAPOLEON is, Guitry's retelling is just that--Guitry, as Talleyrand, telling his friends about various episodes in Napoleon's life. Guitry re-creates the period with the help of legendary art director Eugene Lourie and a cast that includes two of the cinema's greatest directors, Orson Welles (as Sir Hudson Lowe) and Erich von Stroheim (as Beethoven, whose "Eroica" symphony is said to have been originally dedicated to Napoleon). As expected, most of the highlights of N...