Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made by Alison Castle

Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made Reviews

• 
  Nick

  Creative obsession manifest in this fascinating tome. The original limited edition run was a collection of seven individual books, of varying sizes and formats housed within the large outer faux-book-box. This actual book is comprised of scans of the spreads of each individual book. It's a glorious insight into Kubrick's process and of, what would have been, an iconic and epic film.
• 
  Valerie Gough

  Just like Jodorowsky's Dune, this is absence has the film world be lesser for.
• 
  Big Ed Barnham

  I'm struck by how much I love this facsimile of the original TASCHEN publication, and I'm very thankful that folks took the time and energy to dig through the archives to source and assemble everything.
  
  I'm in awe of the treatment, the transcripts of taped conversations, the photo file of 2600 images (of 17,000 that exist), the cross-referenced catalog, the production breakdowns, all of it except...
  
  ...the amazingly dull script.
  
  It feels like a chronological, paint-by-numbers story where Kubrick can't quite make up his mind what story he wants to tell, so he tries to tell all of it. Voice-overs from a narrator and four different key characters give it an explanatory feel. Everything's being explained - either "here's why this scenario played out the way it did" or "here's what's at stake as Napoleon or Josephine consider their choices." Even the straight narrative scenes have this professorial, explanatory feel of "this is why this is important."
  
  The few good scenes that get beyond this (almost) are between Tsar Alexander and Kutusov. They actually come across as the only two real people in the script. The fact that they're more interesting in what would be their 5-10 minutes of screen time than any of Napoleon's screen time is pretty telling.
  
  Now, two things...
  
  1. This was not necessarily the final draft that would have driven the film had the project moved forward.
  2. The visually epic scale of Napoleonic battles and scenes (hell, the whole era) is hard to communicate in a script.
  
  Those things said, this draft probably shows the direction the production was headed, and Kubrick didn't describe much of anything beyond vague references to scale and design. This really spells trouble for any studio exec reading the script, and looking at the budget. They were likely left with the question, "Where's the movie?"
  
  I'm thinking Barry Lyndon is what came out of Kubrick's work on Napoleon, and I think that's a great outcome. Barry Lyndon rocks.
  
  Note: My 5 star rating is for the TASCHEN facsimile as a whole, not the script (with I would feel generous giving 2 stars).
• 
  Willy Boy

  A beautiful book. The classic memo: 'I expect to make the best film ever made'. A few reservations. It doesn't really lend itself very easily to study. Many of the illustrations and photographs are quite small. These issues derive from reformatting the several books included in the mega-expensive edition into one volume. As a result, I suspect that this book is one that sits on the shelf to impress visitors. What it contains is a treasure trove, but it is like Kubrick's unmade film itself - dusty and inert, a cinematic miss Havasham. All Kubrick books have a Citizen Kane quality to them, a Wellesian feeling that the man in question is absent from the piece. This is perhaps for the best. You do not get a handle on what he film may have been, underlining that K's method was to 'discover' the film in the making, with obsessive levels of pre-production and intelligence gathering providing a route map and creative inspiration. A lovely object, but all considered, I would rather I owned a compulsively read volume about the process and methods of ambitious film-making and unfulfilled dreams (with larger illustrations).
• 
  Vic Millar

  I re-read Kubrick’s unproduced screenplay immediately after watching the lengthy Director’s Cut of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon movie from last year, knowing that Scott admitted to reading Kubrick’s script before making his own movie I kept some notes as I read of the similarities and differences, in case anyone other than me cares about such things:
  
  - Kubrick uses both a narrator and a VO from Napoleon - the VO is similar to Ridley as they are both styled as to seem to be from Napoleon's real letters / memoirs, though are likely not actually verbatim, and later even adds VOs from his wives Josephine and Mary-Louise
  - Ridley starts right at Marie Antoinette and the revolution, while Kubrick has a few quick iterative scenes of Napoleon's childhood first, including being bullied at school, losing his virginity to a prostitute and learning strategy at a military academy
  - Both heavily feature Napoleon's early career victory at retaking the port in Toulon
  - Both show Napoleon firing canons into a mob for Paul Barras outside the Royalist Convention
  - Both have Napoleon meet Josephine through her son asking Napoleon for his late father's sword back
  - Ridley (in D.C.) adds in more backstory to Josephine and how she survived post-revolution but pre-Napoleon, and also shows her get close to Napoleon on the advice of Barras who was one of her lovers
  - Ridley only has 1 scene of Napoleon with his mom, while Kubrick foregrounds their relationship from the opening narration and also ends with her after his death
  - Ridley borrows Kubrick's idea to use a VO of Napoleon's obsessive letters to Josephine over footage of her carrying out various affairs while he is away at war, though in Kubrick's version Napoleon explicitly gives her permission for infidelity; he even encourages her to take lovers
  - Both have the exact same VO of Napoleon saying "What are you doing? Why aren't you writing me? You should be writing me twice a day."
  - Kubrick explains the reason Napoleon was so successful was his new military tactics focused on increased mobility, and trusted soldiers to be more independent by rewarding initiative and bravery with promotions, unlike the armies he faced who were stuck in the past, treating soldiers like robots
  - Ridley has Napoleon learn of Josephine's affair with Hippolyte by one of his aids repeating the rumor, while Kubrick has Napoleon receive an anonymous letter
  - Both show Napoleon conquering Egypt but Ridley adds him shooting the pyramids with canons and looking at the mummified corpse of Alexander.
  - Kubrick's narrator makes the political machinations of Napoleon's coup much more clear
  - Kubrick makes it Napoleon's idea to divorce Josephine, rather than something forced on him by his mother after she fails to get pregnant
  - Ridley updates Napoleon’s quote "I am not a man like any other man" to the more modern "I'm not built like other men."
  - Kubrick adds more of Napoleon's Tilsit treaty with Alexander and how Russia slowly grows tired of its terms. He also explains the reason for Napoleon's Russian campaign (Alexander breaking the treaty and restarting Russia's trade with England) far better than Ridley does.
  - Kubrick includes Rostopchin's pitch to burn and desert Moscow before Napoleon gets there
  - Kubrick has a very good scene between Alexander and his General after Moscow's burning; they outline Napoleon's tricky political position and design how to string along hope of a peace treaty until winter when Napoleon's army will be trapped
  - The final act is basically the same between Kubrick and Ridley, the only major difference being that the Waterloo battle has added context and information from the narrator and the animated maps
• 
  Aaron Arnold

  2023 is a strong year for fans of the Napoleonic Cinematic Universe, as us Bonapartisans have both a Ridley Scott biopic as well as a Steven Spielberg miniseries on deck to look forward to. Spielberg’s effort in particular is worth paying attention to, since it’s based on Stanley Kubrick’s never-completed vision for a Napoleon epic, a project which consumed him for decades but was never quite able to pull off, although some of what he had planned ended up in Barry Lyndon. I decided to read up on how exactly Kubrick had planned to sum up Napoleon’s life in a movie of anything approaching reasonable length and found this spectacular 2011 compilation by Kubrick expert Alison Castle, who has put together what must surely be the most elaborately supplemented and lavishly presented screenplay in history, with over 1,100 total pages of fascinating documentation. This includes:
  
  - The screenplay itself.
  - Several script treatment drafts.
  - Letters to and from Kubrick about the project.
  - Interviews Kubrick conducted with historians.
  - Multiple essays about previous Napoleon films and how this screenplay fits into his legacy in film.
  - Endless photographs, sketches, costume designs, location scouting reports, notes Kubrick took, and other research materials.
  
  It’s an incredible amount of prep work for a film that not only never got made but is not well-known even among Kubrick fans, which is a real shame given how much he loved the subject and how incredible it most likely would have been. There are many ways for a film to die - being misplaced like Lang’s full cut of Metropolis, butchered by the studio like Welles’ original edit of The Magnificent Ambersons, stillborn in preproduction like Jodorowsky’s hallucinatory vision for Dune - but even though Spielberg’s completion of AI is famously controversial, if he manages to achieve anything close to what Alison Castle has so wonderfully documented here, he will have resurrected what will be, as the subtitle promises, one of the greatest movies of all time.
• 
  Jeff

  Amazing presentation and a treasure trove of information. A delight for any cinephile
• 
  Kantcrusher

  history repeats itself, first as tragedy (napoleon losing twice), then as farce (kubrick failing to realize his napoleon film)
• 
  Dakota

  Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon is a movie that I would have sincerely wished to see, as the level of research and skill that went into making such a film would have been extraordinary on its own. I have been a fan of Kubrick's and an aspiring screenwriter, so this compilation of Kubrick's effort was enlightening and an excellent addition to my books on cinema. Any fan of Kubrick would enjoy it, and despite how lazy I can be, I managed to read this entire book in under a week only due to procrastination; in reality, it was only about two day's effort.
  
  It goes into complete detail about Kubrick's research of Napoleon Bonaparte and interpretation of the character, which gives an invaluable perspective on how the filmmaker chooses to adapt historical figures. Throughout the book, I was astonished about how much detail he desired in a film that would unfortunately never be made. To look through the compiled 17,000 images from the Napoleonic Era, knowing Kubrick looked through them first, was not only attractive, but it also inspires one to think how he would have shot the film.
  
  It reviews budgets, screenplay, drafts, summaries, and even correspondence between Kubrick and historical experts on the subjects he needed. If one seeks to make a film or peer into Stanley Kubrick's mind, then one should purchase this book, despite its price.
• 
  Filippo Ulivieri

  I meriti del libro derivano tutti dal materiale e quindi logica vuole che qualsiasi libro avesse attinto dal Kubrick Archive avrebbe avuto lo stesso merito. L'apporto della curatrice Alison Castle e dei designer della M/M ha operato esclusivamente al ribasso.
  
  Considerati i soldi che mi hanno fatto spendere, il numero di pagine non sfruttate, la disorganizzazione e soprattutto la cura, la passione e il tempo spesi strenuamente da Kubrick per forgiare il suo più grande film, qui sostanzialmente non valorizzati, avverto una netta sensazione di doloroso e incommensurabile spreco.
  
  In due parole: deludente selezione in una orribile confezione per un materiale prezioso.
  
  Recensione fiume qui:
  http://www.archiviokubrick.it/ak/blog...
  Per chi ha fretta, la conclusione è qui:
  http://www.archiviokubrick.it/ak/blog...
• 
  Kimley

  This is so geeky and way outta my price range but I sure would love to be able to fondle it for just a bit.
• 
  Doruk çamlıbel

  Overrated auteur...