Carl Davis conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra during the final triptych (I am not the author of that shot - but I thought it was great)
I should have written a review at least a week ago. But I got busy with various other tasks. Now I have time to tell you everything about this amazing experience: watching Gance's Napoléon at the Royal Festival Hall with the fabulous Philharmonia Orchestra (the film was shown as part of their concert season). On the 30th November, I took the Eurostar very early with my mum to get to London in time to watch Gance's masterpiece. The show was starting at 1.30 pm and ending at 9.30 pm with three intervals. The Royal Festival Hall is a prime venue for classical concerts with about 2,500 seats. Its acoustics are excellent. Watching Napoléon is a marathon, but you never feel it's too long.
This screening marked the 33rd anniversary of the first ever screening of Kevin Brownlow's restoration with Carl Davis' music in London. It took place on 30th November 1980 at the Empire Leceister Square. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate this event again in London. Some people came from all over Europe to see it. A dozen or so film friends from France I know came to London especially to see it.
Being very familiar with the 1983 restoration in B&W, I was able to spot the new elements of this 2000 restoration. First, the print has been tinted and toned. Then numerous sequences have been developped: the Marseillaise, the Corsica sequence, the Toulon siege, Josephine playing the piano, etc. I had previously in Paris a disastrous experience with Napoléon. The film was presented in December 2009 with 1983 Brownlow restoration with an ghastly score by contemporary French composer Marius Constant. The music never followed what happened on the screen and was incredibly dark and depressing. I fled the room after only 2 hours. What a difference, this time! Carl Davis illuminate each character with spark and wit. He never tries to do a second degree which doens't exist in Gance's film. He reflects the emotions of the characters on screen: love, loneliness, despair, passion. When you think he managed to compose and compile this core in less than 4 months in 1980, it's a brilliant achievement. You have to remember that in those days, nobody knew how to write a silent film score for orchestra. Carl Davis was at the forefront of a new era. Davis decided to use composers from the Napoleonic era: Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Gossec, Dittersdorf, etc. This is an excellent decision at it gives the spectator the actual ambiance of the French Revolution. If the French changed the course of History with the Revolution, in music such a revolution was also happening thanks to Beethoven who cracked the Classical mold to move on to Romantic era. Davis used also numerous French songs from the period (Marseillaise, le Chant du départ, la Carmagnole) which are absolutely spot on in terms of atmosphere and beautifully orchestrated.
In France, people always wonder how to react in front of Napoleon. A huge amount of prejudices prevents people from enjoying Gance's film for what it is: a recreation of the French Revolution mixing historical events and characters and fiction like Alexandre Dumas, the novelist. In London, there is no such problem. The public laughed numerous times through the film, always in the right place.
The new tinting brings a real warmth to a lot of sequences such as the Marseillaise one. Unfortunately, the red tinting for the Toulon siege was disappointing as it drowned the contrast a lot. Red is a difficult colour to handle as I have seen with many other silents. The Toulon battle remains nevertheless a great moment in the film where Gance managed to recreate a battle at night under gale, rain and hail in a studio in the most masterly way. In the first two hours of the film, you have a collection of film innovations that could be tedious if not handled the way Gance did it. He never tries to impress for the sake of it. Each technical device is used for a purpose in the story. You have hand-held cameras, camera on sled, camera on the back of a horse or suspended on a pendulum. It's there to put the spectator at the centre of the action.
And there is the final with the screen becoming bigger and bigger as the curtains open to reveal a triple screen covering the entire length of the hall. Again, Gance filmed some huge panoramas (forecasting Cinerama, 27 years before it was created) but also some combinations of three images with fascinating imagination. By the end, as Davis repeated Méhul's Le Chant du départ and La Marseillaise with tremendous effect. I had the feeling of being on the 14th of July while it was only 30th of November!
It was really an extraordinary event.
