Napoléon

the long version

Abel Gance's great film Napoleon, as heroic in ambition as its subject, opened at the Opera de Paris in April 1927. It was the summation of the silent cinema, a remarkable feat of imagination, ingenuity and stamina. Years in the planning and months in production, the film astonished its audience with the boldness of its conception - not least at the moment when the screen expanded to reveal Gance's visionary invention of Polyvision, a wide-screen system thirty years ahead of its time. Yet Gance's triumph was to be short-lived. The American version, re-edited by MGM, was a disaster. The sheer length of the film, and its spectacular effects, produced problems for exhibitors. Gance never gave up trying to 'improve' it. In 1934 he added sound; in 1970 he was still editing.