Abel Gance’s Napoleon finally revealed in a restored version!

A true Arlesian, this masterpiece of French silent cinema on the life of the emperor finally appears in its complete and restored version. The launch will take place at the beginning of July at the Seine Musicale near Paris.

16 years is the time it took the teams supervised by the Cinémathèque française to overcome the juggernaut. In its original form the Napoleon ofAbel Gance (1927), a masterpiece of silent cinema, has almost never been seen. And for good reason, its author made many different versions at the time of its release to make his long film (more than seven hours) accessible.

When the Cinémathèque française undertook to “reconstruct the beast” in 2007, the objective was to complete the work in 2021, the year of the bicentenary of the death of the Emperor. If the lights appeared green, the work could not be completed on time. On July 4 and 5, it will finally be shown at the Seine Musicale near Paris that “the monster“, as described by Georges Mourier, the director and researcher in charge of the restoration.

At the musical Seine, Napoleon will be projected on a giant screen like a film concert. 250 musicians from Radio France musical groups will accompany the unfolding of this film-opera, programmed in two parts. The work of Abel Gance is renowned for its triptych finale like a Middle Ages altarpiece.

“Make the spectator an actor; involve him in the action; carry it away in the rhythm of the images”explained Abel Gance in 1927.

In an interview given to the CNC which supported this restoration work, Georges Mourier, transformed into a true archaeologist (he assessed hundreds of reels of the film), admitted:

“Faced with Napoleon, me, a little director, is a bit as if we had asked a Sunday painter to tidy up Michelangelo’s studio!“

On X (formerly Twitter)Manuel Alduy, the head of cinema at France Télévisions, announced that the restored version of Napoleon would also be seen on the public service, without specifying on what date.