#I loooooove these old-timey megaproductions

[alicedrawslesmis]

You've seen Napoleon (1927)? How did you enjoy the heavy-handed visual metaphors? One of my favorite works of historical cinema, if only because of the rather impressive crowd/battle scenes...

I caught the movie on TV by accident, me being a long time les miserables fan (plus I'm Brasilian and we have some weird history re: the napoleonic wars) I already had background knowledge on the whole story and so I was just. Fascinated. Its SO weird and cool like.

Your typical early film visual metaphor but turned up to eleven with surrealist-inspired image association to convey meaning. That era of film where they were inventing new techniques left and right you had Eisenstein and Kuleshov already, and some fucking french guy decides to make an ENTIRE MOVIE of FREE ASSOCIATIONS to tell a story that ENDS ON A TRIPTYCH with the marseillaise like CAN YOU IMAGINE WATCHING THAT LIVE

also the original cut was 9 hours long. I love that movie. That movie is my white whale

And I was telling my dad about the movie because, you know, oh my god! And he told me his uncle, João Sócrates, (who worked for years as the main technician in the british film institute) was in charge of the restoration and I had a big chat with him about it. How the finale with the three projectors never worked because no one ever listened to him that you have to turn on the other 2 projectors like half an hour earlier so the light has time to heat up and match luminosity with the main screen and he always left any projection of the movie pissed off. And how the french film institute hated the BFI for beating them to the restoration and promised to come through with the 7 hour cut, even tho Abel Gance said the 3 hour cut is the final form it should take (where? I don't see it. They supposedly have Netflix backing. They supposedly were coming out with it in 2019. WHERE? But this is not the first time french cinema disappoints me. Boo)