Hand on stomach, cocked hat on forehead, gaze fixed on the dachas of Bérézina, Napoleon Bonaparte is a cartoon character. Sorry, cinema. Steven Spielberg has just announced that he wants to take over Kubrick’s grand project, life and greatness of Napoleon 1erEmperor of the French and king of Saint Helena. The director of “The Fabelmans” intends to adapt the script for a series in seven episodes which will be broadcast on HBO.
Like d’Artagnan, Hercules, Billy the Kid or Mickey Mouse, this damn Bonaparte has been cluttering up screens for more than a century. Arranged in all the sauces, he is sometimes an extraordinary hero, sometimes a perched madman, sometimes an ethical general. Charlie Chaplin dreamed of him, Patrice Chéreau too (he played him in Youssef Chahine’s film), and Goncharov, an employee of the Tsar’s railways who became a Soviet filmmaker, made him a magnificent loser in silent films, thanks to his boss. operator named Forestier, good pick.
At the Universal studio, near the Opera, in this brilliant room devoted to cartoons, you could see, in my childhood, Betty Boop doing “Boop boop pi doo” to the winner of the Pont d’Arcole, and Donald Duck gossiping familiarly with “Napo Boy”.
Alain Chabat, in the same vein, took over in 2009 in “Night at the Museum 2”, well-meaning historical nanar. Unable to comment on “Die Wäscherin des Hern Bonaparte” (1953), on “The Sanculotti Duo” (1966) or on “Rzhevski against Napoleon” (2012) with Volodymir Zelensky in the role – predestined.
On the other hand, how many Napoleons in the history of cinema (more than 700!) with films that float in the memory: Albert Dieudonné, dark eyes and inked mouth, in the saga of Abel Gance (1927) ; Louis Alibert, overexcited mutt, in “Let’s go up the Champs Élysées” by Sacha Guitry (1938), Gérard Oury, unexpected sovereign (in English), in “The Beautiful Spy” (1953) by Raoul Walsh.
In bulk: Sean Connery, unlikely Agamemnon, shook hands with Ian Holm, an actor accustomed to the roles of crooks, but who had the silhouette of Napoleon (a pot of rillettes with a lock of hair) in “Bandits, Bandits” (1982). Woody Allen, romantic and cowardly Russian, worried about the presence of his rival, Bonaparte (played by James Tolkan, son of a Calumet cattle farmer) in “War and Love” (1975). Rod Steiger, actor who played Mussolini, Lucky Luciano, Pontius Pilate, Al Capone and a string of drooling generals, indulged in “Waterloo” (1970) romping about like a drunken Polish pope.
The mutts, moreover, found under Bonaparte’s cast-off the occasion to frown, to bark orders and to put on pounds: see Raymond Pellegrin in “Imperial Venus” (1962), it’s an experiment in overvoltage (he’s with Gina Lollobrigida, we understand that). Watch Pierre Mondy in “Austerlitz” (1960), it’s a test of a different kind: we constantly have the impression that he is going to make a joke or take out a whoopee cushion. Just for the record, let’s mention Marlon Brando in “Desiree”, who seems, despite his immense talent, not to know in which waters it is advisable to swim, and who bequeathed his emperor’s tunic to Jack Nicholson. He made good use of it in “The Little Shop of Horrors”by smoking (probably) medicinal herbs.
There were, it is said, Indian, Japanese and South American Napoleons, in films that we will never see (thank goodness). We wait with serenity for Spielberg’s film, which risks being overtaken by Ridley Scott. Joaquin Phoenix would be the chosen one. It is therefore he who would have to say Napoleon’s two most famous lines: “Imagination rules the world” (which is true) and “Don’t wash, I’m coming” (pig, go!).
