Introduction

My chronological survey of NAPOLÉON begins with the opening scenes, set during Bonaparte's boyhood days at Brienne College. This was a military academy the child had joined in early 1779, having been sent by his parents to the mainland from the island of Corsica at the age of nine. Gance's scenes are set in 1783, the year before Bonaparte left Brienne for the Ecole Militaire in Paris. This prologue establishes a number of aesthetic and narrative ideas that are developed over the course of the film. After examining the intellectual impetus behind the cinematic techniques visible in these scenes, I will explore how Gance's visual language and manipulation of historical evidence produces an engaging characterization of the young Bonaparte (Nicolas Roudenko). I aim to highlight the ways in which dramatic irony creates both objective distance to, and subjective involvement with, this central figure – and the effects of this ambiguity on our understanding of character and narrative. Far from offering a ‘banal’ (Thomson 1994: 273) or ‘psychologically simplistic’ (Andrew 1999: 44) portrait, Gance produces a complex interpretive experience for audiences.

Cinema as experiential art

Gance's filmmaking techniques in NAPOLÉON must be understood in conjunction with the nature of the cinematic experience in the silent era. Between the late nineteenth century and the universal adoption of sound in the 1930s, live performance was standard practice in film venues. The type of accompaniment varied hugely, both in scale and in quality: bands and orchestras, soloists and singers, narrators and showmen all featured in the 1900s.