“It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.” – Stanley Kubrick, Oct. 20, 1971.
There
are few unrealized projects in the history of cinema more tantalizingly
fascinating than Stanley Kubrick’s planned feature about Napoleon. Even
in 1967, at the time of its initial pre-production (the first time
around), it seemed like a potentially great idea. But now, looking back
with Kubrick’s entire body of work as a reference point, it truly does
stand as a project this legendary filmmaker should have been destined to
make. Thanks to a mammoth and comprehensive collection of materials
fashioned into Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made,
edited by Alison Castle and published by Taschen, we can for the first
time see how Kubrick prepared for the film and what he had in mind for
its ultimate big-screen presentation. Stylistic and thematic features
now synonymous with Kubrick are evident, as are particular
characterizations, set pieces, action sequences, and recurring visual
motifs.
Kubrick first began discussing the project around the time of 2001: A Space Odyssey;
a notebook on the proposed film dates back to as early as July 1, 1967.
He was never satisfied with previous depictions of the life of the
great leader, even going so far as to criticize Abel Gance’s masterful Napoleon,
from 1927. “I found it really terrible,” he said. It was “technically
ahead of his time and [Gance] introduced inventive new film techniques …
but as far as story and performance goes it’s a very crude picture.”
Sergey Bondarchuk’s 1966 War and Peace was “a cut above the others, and did have some very good scenes,” but, he added, he wasn’t overly impressed. With Paths of Glory and Spartacus under his belt, a large-scale epic would have been reasonable for the then-39-year-old filmmaker; with Lolita and Dr. Strangelove
most recently completed, he also had a degree of influence and had made
a name for himself as a gifted, if provocative, director. Though 2001
had not yet been released when Kubrick first started contemplating the
Napoleon project, it too would have further indicated his visual prowess
and technical proficiency.
Kubrick expected to keep costs down on Napoleon by utilizing the same sort of front projection technique he had for 2001.
Super-fast lenses and specially engineered film stock would enable him
to shoot in real interiors with relatively little light (by just
candlelight he suggested at one point, as he would eventually do with Barry Lyndon).
Camera tests were also done using a “new kind of tear-resistant paper
which could be printed to look like an actual military uniform from a
certain distance.” Always with the bottom line under consideration,
Kubrick, as indicated in the documentation included in the Taschen set,
was meticulous about the financial aspects of this large-scale
production. He knew that keeping under budget, as he regularly did,
helped to ensure his creative freedom and limit studio interference.
Kubrick
estimated that the film would run about 180 minutes. Shooting would be
done largely in France, Italy, and Sweden, and Romania and Yugoslavia
had agreed to supply up to 30,000 troops as extras. According to
biographer Vincent LoBrutto, “Production for the exterior location work
was planned for the winter of 1969. Kubrick estimated he would complete
the location filming in two to three months and another three to four
months for the studio work.”
Despite
a pre-production memo that at one time stated “no stars” — presumably
to keep costs down — to play the emperor, Kubrick had considered David
Hemmings, fresh off his success in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up,
as well as Oskar Werner, Al Pacino, and, briefly, Ian Holm. Jack
Nicholson was also a strong candidate, indeed the primary candidate into
the 1970s; Kubrick was immensely impressed with the young co-star of
the recently released Easy Rider. Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness,
Richard Burton, and Jean-Paul Belmondo were also rumored to star in
unspecified roles. As for leading ladies, Kubrick had noted Julie
Andrews and Vanessa Redgrave as possibilities. Audrey Hepburn was
Kubrick’s top choice for Josephine, but apparently, the sexual nature of
the planned film, certainly daring for its time, steered her away and
she declined outright. (On the sexual nature of the film’s subject,
Kubrick contended that Napoleon had a “sex life worthy of Arthur
Schnitzler,” author of, among other things, the novella Traumnovelle,” on which Eyes Wide Shut was based.)
Through
the years that followed, the film hopped from studio to studio.
Financing would seem secure and then suddenly dissipate. The proposed
cast would change, possible locations would change, the storyline would
change, and so on and so on. Alas, no film was to be made. The
disastrous failure of other large-scale epics, particularly a similarly
Napoleonic film like Waterloo in 1970, seemed to sideline the film for good. (“Waterloo
was such a silly film,” wrote Kubrick not long after it came out. “It
will not make things any easier but in the end I am sure we will get it
done.”)
Yet even after A Clockwork Orange
in 1971, Kubrick told an interviewer, “I plan to do ‘Napoleon’ next,”
and in 1972, “A Clockwork Orange” author Anthony Burgess told the
Village Voice that he was working on a novel about the life of Napoleon:
“I’m writing it in the shape of a Beethoven symphony. Kubrick is going
to make it into a movie.” And during the making of Barry Lyndon in
1975, rumor had it that Kubrick was simultaneously shooting battle
scenes for “Napoleon.” By the next decade, though, the project had more
or less vanished from his radar. In 1980, he gave the following response
regarding the film: “I haven’t seriously though about [the] Napoleon
film for years … [I]nflation would put the film in the neighborhood of
$50 to $60 million, and I’m not sure that it can be done in under three
hours’ playing time.” The idea of a Napoleon film was not totally dead
for Jack Nicholson, though. As late as 1986, he was still talking abut
the possibility of a Napoleon movie; in 1983, when asked who he would
like to direct him in such a film, he responded, “Stanley Kubrick — I
feel obligated to give it to him first. After all, he got me
‘Napoleonized’ in the first place.”
The
frequent half-starts on the film through the years are perhaps largely
due to how Kubrick viewed Napoleon’s life and times, insofar as they
could be representative of any current period. The occurrences and the
basic ideas that would manifest themselves in Kubrick’s Napoleon would have relevance no matter when the film would ultimately be made. Kubrick said, “I find that all the issues with which [Napoleon,
the potential film] concerns itself are oddly contemporary — the
responsibilities and abuses of power, the dynamics of social revolution,
the relationship of the individual to the state, war, militarism, etc.”
(Shades of Strangelove and Paths of Glory, to be sure.)
Included
in the Taschen collection are a book of images taken by location
scouts, photographs of costume tests, samples of note cards detailing
what was happening every day of Napoleon’s life, and 17,000 slides of
Napoleonic imagery. Aside from representing a fascinating collection for
the Kubrick admirer, this assortment further stresses the
meticulousness and drive toward total control that Kubrick brought to
most of his productions. An extended conversation with professor and
adviser Felix Markham gives remarkable insight into Kubrick’s queries
regarding Napoleon’s life; alas, we can only speculate about their
possible uses. Napoleon is also an exemplary case study of
Kubrick’s attention to detail and obsession with collecting all of the
facts, knowing all that there is to know about his given subject, and
thus having the utmost control over his production. He was a filmmaker,
as this collection can attest to, who wanted to see it all, understand
it all, and know, better than anyone else, how to most successfully and
authentically bring said details to filmic life. According to Eva-Maria
Magel, “The material left behind by Kubrick is possibly the largest of
all private archives on Napoleon … [comprising] a range of material,
including his subject’s political testament, the memoirs of associates
and opponents, academic studies, and popular histories. Numbering at one
point at about 500 volumes …”
Also
part of the set is a 1969 screenplay draft. From this alone, one is
able to glean a decent idea of what Kubrick had in mind for the film. Of
course, Kubrick’s cinematic eye was a singular one, and it would be
egregious to presuppose what he would ultimately do. It is,
nevertheless, not hard to imagine a reasonably accurate picture of the
scenes described in the script, had they been shot, especially given the
period in which the screenplay was written and at times considered for
production, and taking into account the relative proximity of time
periods covered in this story and Barry Lyndon. The imagery
would have most likely taken on roughly the same detailed and carefully
composed shape as the 1975 picture. As noted by Magel, “Barry Lyndon
benefited enormously from the research, the pre-filming work and the
technical insights of ‘Napoleon.’” Unquestionably, more than any other
Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon can function as a sort of visual gauge with which to envision what is only described in the screenplay.
In
a graphic pattern common to most of Kubrick’s work featuring wartime
sequences, the script calls for scenes and shots depicting orderly
assemblies of men on the battlefield; the mise-en-scene
strongly indicates an illustration emphasizing symmetry and regimented
formation, particularly as they are relevant to, and illustrative of,
violent and militaristic exchanges. He wanted to stage the battles in “a
vast tableau where the formations moved in an almost choreographic
fashion.” And indeed, the screenplay descriptions do indicate what could
have been immense panoramas of methodically orchestrated and executed
carnage.
Throughout
the screenplay, these sweeping vistas are juxtaposed with scenes of
more constricted interiors, notably the scenes of strategic and
bureaucratic conferencing and the scenes of sexual intimacy. In the case
of the latter, if the violence proposed for “Napoleon” resembles Barry Lyndon and to a certain extent Paths of Glory, the sexuality is akin to Eyes Wide Shut.
“Maxima erotica” is simply how Kubrick describes one scene, and
Napoleon’s first encounter with Josephine is at a sexual performance of
sorts, not unlike the haunting orgy in Kubrick’s final masterpiece.
Relying
on a good deal of commentary, the screenplay gives a voiceover to an
unseen narrator as well as Napoleon himself, and at times Josephine and
Tsar Alexander also chime in with their thoughts and observations. The
voiceover belonging to the all-seeing narrator is similar to not only Barry Lyndon but also The Killing, in which the audience is afforded knowledge not necessarily granted to the characters involved. In Napoleon,
it also gives considerable historical context, certainly helpful for a
film so densely packed with names, years, military campaigns, countries,
and so forth.
The structure of Napoleon similarly resembles Barry Lyndon in its rise-and-fall projection. With Napoleon,
though, even more biographical area is covered. Kubrick manages to
include a vast array of pertinent moments from the emperor’s life,
starting as far back as his childhood, where we see that his military
career essentially started at age 9. To maintain so much exposition and
chronological information, Kubrick’s screenplay is remarkably swift. In
fact, one wonders how, if filmed, Kubrick would have managed the pace.
Starting with Napoleon as a small child, he is 20 years old by page 9,
and from there on, it’s one scene after another highlighting crucial
personal and professional events, all the way up to his death, and all
in a 186-page script.
It’s
clear that Kubrick cared a great deal about Napoleon. “I don’t claim he
is the best and most honorable man in history – only the most
interesting,” he said. And much of what is striking about Napoleon’s
characterization in the screenplay is the larger-than-life persona he
embodies. While this may indeed be historically accurate, one can’t help
but also draw comparisons with the fictional Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
Napoleon exhibits this same sort of independence, self-absorption, and
social gall. “I am not a man like any other,” he declares at one point.
By the end of the script, even if one knew nothing about the real
figure, it would be hard to disagree with such a statement.
Also
like Alex, Napoleon in Kubrick’s screenplay has a distinct love for
authority, that is, his own. One of the most notable themes in all of
Kubrick’s work is a depiction and analysis of organization, control,
order, and authority, and this is unquestionably one of the primarily
elements that continually arise in Napoleon. Though Kubrick’s
project was never brought to eventual fruition, the materials that do
exist on the film express perhaps better than any other Kubrick film
notions of control and authority, in war sequences (pre-, during, and
post-) in particular, but also in realms beyond. It’s little wonder that
the topic so fascinated the filmmaker. As Geoffrey Ellis notes in “A
Historian’s Critique of the Screenplay,” “I can understand why Kubrick’s
fascination in Napoleon’s career lay chiefly in the nature of power
itself: how it was gained, how it was ultimately lost.” And as LoBrutto
rightly acknowledges, “Napoleon was an ideal subject for Kubrick: it
embraced the director’s passion for control, power, obsession, strategy
and the military.” A passage underlined by Kubrick in J. Christopher
Herold’s “The Mind of Napoleon” clearly indicates how the filmmaker and
his subject could be considered kindred spirits: “My power is dependent
on my glory, and my glory on my victories. My power would fail if I did
not base it on still more glory and still more victories.” Next to this,
Kubrick wrote, “A task without an end.”
There
are numerous scenes outlined in the script that illustrate these ideas.
For example, Scene 21 reads: “ANIMATED MAP: Napoleon’s plan for the
capture of Toulon. Explaining with narration how, rather than trying to
capture the town by storm, it is, instead, only necessary to capture
Fort Eguillette, a promontory of land from which French batteries would
command the inner and outer harbours of the port, making them untenable
to the English fleet, and quickly leading to the fall of the city.”
Here, as seen in Fear and Desire, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket,
is a familiar image of one in control (or, at least, one trying to be
in control), consulting a map as it stands as a tangible object
conveying order and understanding. Along those lines, Scene 31 details:
“INT- NAPOLEON’S PARIS HQ – DAY: Pencil between his teeth, dividers in
one hand, [Napoleon] creeps around on hands and knees on top of a very
large map of Italy, laid out from wall to wall. Other large maps cover
the table, the couch and any other available space.” Still with the
actual and symbolic significations of maps, this sequence epitomizes a
man obsessed with control, with securing the details of his endeavors.
Could there be a more telling image in a Kubrick film than this when it
comes to showing one’s pursuit and craving for absolute control? This
picture of the great general (with ranking an indication of authority)
crawling around on all fours going over, no doubt to the last detail,
his next move?
Also
like in much of Kubrick’s work, there are sprinklings of humor in
“Napoleon.” Kubrick often infuses some comedy, however dark, into a
majority of his movies, and in Napoleon, there are moments of
obvious comedic banter done simply to amuse, but there are also
sequences of subtle, emotionally affecting comedy that has more
resounding resonance. In the first case, one scene has Napoleon
discussing the cold with Tsar Alexander. Napoleon inquires about whether
or not the Tsar wears long-sleeved and long-legged underwear. “You can
never conjure up brilliances with a cold bottom,” says the emperor,
causing both men to laugh, concluding the scene. In the other case,
however, the scene of the divorce proceedings for Napoleon and Josephine
is tragically amusing in its superficial unspoken falseness; she agrees
to the separation because she has been unable to bear him a child, not,
of course, because neither one has ever been faithful.
Stanley
Kubrick’s uncompleted Napoleon project is an engrossing entry in the
great filmmaker’s career, and any admirer of his is certainly grateful
for the breadth of material he left behind. Few of film history’s
nonexistent potential classics have this much to work with and to
explore. We’ll obviously never be able to know exactly what Kubrick
intended to create. (This will remain true even if Steven Spielberg’s
attempt to adapt Kubrick’s outline to a TV miniseries comes to
fruition.) However, we should consider ourselves fortunate that he was
so distinctive in his formal tendencies and narrative concerns; with
these consistencies, combined with what is available, at least we can
partially analyze Napoleon, or at least what might have been.
ESSAY from SOUND ON SIGHT
