JohnHowardReid The poorly dubbed English version is appropriately available on a poor, slightly-out-of-focus and somewhat-drained-of-color Hollywood Classics DVD. Produced on a lavish budget with a galaxy of famous players as long as your arm, this is an egocentric production in which most of the famous stars – buried under loads of make-up – are totally unrecognizable. Robbing them of their voices doesn't help either. Daniel Gélin plays the young Napoleon, but the role is soon taken over by Raymond Pellegrin – who looks nothing like Gélin but bears a remarkable similarity to Charles Boyer's Nappy in Clarence Brown's 1937 Conquest. The movie is directed by Sacha Guitry as an almost endless series of boring tableaux which may have been reasonably effective in the original French production, but look old-fashioned and stagey in the carelessly dubbed DVD (which gives no indication of its length but is most obviously NOT 3 hours and 10 minutes, and I seriously doubt that it is even 105 minutes).

dbdumonteil Among the historical works of Mister Guitry who epitomizes French humor,French wit and French spirit ,"Napoleon" is to my eyes the least interesting:it lacks the sweep of "Si Versailles M'Etait Conté " the absurd humor of the underrated "Si Paris M'Etait Conté" ,the madness of the "Perles de la Couronne ".Well and there is also "En remontant les Champs Elysees "....These big budgets works-there were only a few in France of the fifties ,foreign users would be surprised if they were told that only a very small percentage of movies were shot in color - have all something in common: the main character,Napoleon or La Fayette is played by not-very-famous actors (Here Raymond Pellegrin,in Gance's "Austerlitz " (not to be mistaken for his silent movie of 1927),it's Pierre Mondy ,and in Dreville's "La Fayette" ,it's Michel Le Royer,whereas the supporting cast includes all the who's who of the FRench cinema (not only ,Orson Welles shows up from time to time).For instance,in "Napoleon" there are plenty of stars:Michèle Morgan ,Danielle Darrieux,Jean-Pierre Aumont,Henri Vidal,Jean Gabin,Michel Simon,Jean Marais,Serge Reggiani,Pierre Brasseur,Daniel Gélin (as a young long-haired Napo) etc etc etc The film when you watch it in FRench is obviously desperately in need of humor,Guitry's forte.It looks like a beautiful pictures book which could be summarized as "Napoleon was a great man.Period".The less glorious episodes are almost passed over in silence ,like the Trafalgar disaster or the Russian retreat.Only Montand's song and Lannes ,now a legless cripple,pointing to the ambulance full of dying men and screaming "Enough!" have some emotional power.The crowning in Notre Dame is botched (Abel Gance found a better treatment of that scene in his own "Austerlitz ")Get the follow -up "Si Paris M'Etait Conté" instead !This was to be Guitry's testament

ggiroux "You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." Sacha GuitryGuitry would have been very amused by some the comments posted here. It never was his intent to do an historically accurate movie. Anyone slightly familiar with his filmography knows the subtle derision he infused in all his storytelling. I found that movie very entertaining but I know, as some of my fellow commentators should too, that for factual accuracy one must look elsewhere. I too recommend his rendition of the highs and lows of the French monarchy in " Si Versailles m'était conté ".

Kirasjeri For the ultimate "Napoleon" experience we have to go to 1927 and Abel Gance's masterpiece. Guitry's version is solid - but it crams almost thirty years into one movie. Gance had a longer movie - but it ended in 1797; Waterloo was in 1815, and Guitry's account even went beyond Napoleon's death: it concluded with the glorious return of Napoleon's remains to Paris much later. Nonetheless, even though it moved from scene to scene too quickly and needed more character development, this is a solid historical account worth seeing. BEST OF ALL, both the Gance and Guitry versions give us an alternative interpretation of Napoleon instead of the usual Anglophile hate-filled anti-French propaganda, as seen in "Horation Hornblower" and others.