Parky at the Pictures (DVD 7/9/2017)

Opening in `Some Time and Some Place', the action sees Death (Bernhard Goetzke) materialise from a puff of smoke on a windy country road. He hails a carriage containing a Loving Couple (Lil Dagover and Walter Janssen), who have playfully covered a goose belonging to their fellow passenger so that they can kiss without corrupting its morals. The old woman descends rather than share the coach with such a sinister stranger and the lovebirds huddle together as the driver moves away.

They arrive at a small town that time seems to have forgotten, where the dignitaries gather at the Golden Unicorn Inn for a nightcap. Close-ups introduce the greedily supping mayor (Hans Sternberg), the genial reverend (Carl Rückert), the gluttonous doctor (Wilhelm Diegelman), the fastidious notary (Max Adalbert) and the demure schoolteacher (Erich Pabst), who are discussing the stranger who had asked the gravedigger (Paul Rehkopf) for directions to the town and had inquired about the ownership of the land abutting the cemetery. On learning that the council planned to use the plot to extend the graveyard, the newcomer had produced several gold coins to secure a 99-year lease. But, having claimed he wanted the land to create a garden, he had erected a towering wall around the spot.

As the worthies discuss the fact that the barrier has no gates or doors, the sweethearts arrive in town and seek refreshment at the inn. They are followed by the outsider, who sits at their table as the landlady (Lydia Potechina) offers them a drink from bridal cup that is traditionally reserved for young couples. Death looks on as they fill the cup with wine and the woman sips from the base, while her fiancé takes a deep draught. However, she is so shocked to see the strangers pint pot turn into an hourglass that she breaks the cup and rushes into the kitchen in some distress.

She is mollified by some white kittens and a puppy. But, as she brings one of the cats to show to her fiancé, she is appalled to discover that he has disappeared, along with their mysterious travelling companion. The elders inform her that they left together and, acting on the advice of a beggar (Georg John), the woman runs around the town with a growing sense of despair. An owl hoots at the moon near the cemetery wall, while the nightwatchman (Max Pfeiffer) announces 10pm and warns the townsfolk against over-indulging in wine and schnapps or they will wind up in the Devil's realm. As they stagger home, the apothecary (Karl Platen) goes in search of herbs like touch-me-not balsam, Solomon's seal, wolfberry and centaury that acquire a special power from the full moon. While he works, however, the woman sees a column of ghosts walking towards her and she faints when she sees her beloved pass through the wall.

Finding the distressed damsel, the apothecary takes her back to the pharmacy, where he learned his trade at his father's knee. While he potters round brewing her a nourishing tea, the woman reads a quotation from the Song of Solomon about love being stronger than death. This gives her an idea and she pours herself a libation from one of the bottles and finds herself climbing a staircase inside an arched opening in Death's wall. He greets her and asks why she has entered his kingdom, as she still has many years to live. But she insists on sharing her lover's fate and Death takes her to a vaulted chamber filled with long, slender candles at different stages of burning. He informs her that each one represents a life and that it flickers only as long as God wills. She asks about her man, but Death assures her that his time had come and that he has not stolen him away from her.

Cupping a flame in his hand that turns into an infant who is mourned by its mother, Death laments being cursed with witnessing humanity's suffering and being detested for merely obeying God. Thus, when the woman begs for an opportunity to prove that love conquers all, Death affords her three chances to touch his heart and promises that, if she can stop one of the expiring candles from going out, he will reward her with her lover's soul.

`The Story of the First Light' takes place in the City of the Faithful in the month of Ramadan. As the Muezzin calls the people to prayer, a Frankish non-believer (Janssen) catches the eye of Princess Zobeide (Dagover), the sister of the Caliph (Eduard von Winterstein). He protests that he has not seen her in days and she chides him for raising such matters in the mosque. But their conversation is overheard by a Dervish (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) who raises the alarm that an infidel has desecrated the sanctuary. Zobeide rushes forward to urge her co-religionists not to shed blood in a holy place and her intervention allows the Frank to escape through the cloisters and up a staircase to the roof. Managing to held back the chasing horde by holding down a trapdoor, the Frank jumps into a pool and the Caliph's men report that the interloper is missing. Zobeide promises her brother that she only had the integrity of the mosque in mind when she saved the Frank from slaughter. But she sends her maid Ayesha (Erika Unruh) to find her lover and tell him to come under cover of darkness and use the secret way into the palace so that she can protect him. However, El Mot the gardener (Goetzke) follows Ayesha to the Frank's hideout and, when he climbs a rope into Zobeide's quarters, the guards are waiting for him. He is captured after a frantic pursuit through the magnificent palace and taken to the garden to be buried up to his neck. The Caliph takes his sister on to the roof and idly smokes a hookah, as she looks down to see the commotion in the garden. She rushes downstairs to cradle her dying lover's head. But El Mot transforms into Death and the first of the candles is extinguished.

The scene shifts to High Renaissance Venice for `The Story of the Second Light', as carnival revellers scamper over a bridge arching over the Grand Canal. Aloof from the festivities, Monna Fiametta (Dagover) tosses a rose to Gianfrancesco (Janssen), who is waiting beneath her balcony. Unfortunately, the gesture is witnessed by her scowling betrothed, Girolamo (Klein-Rogge), who reminds Fiametta that he is the finest swordsman in the Council of Fourteen before taunting her with the hope that she will one day throw him a flower after her foolish fancy has been buried following a heated carnival duel.

Left alone, Fiametta entrusts messenger (Lothar Mütel) with two missives and urges him to inform Girolamo that she sends her note with her best smile. She summons the Moor (Louis Brody) from a cockfight and presents him with a poison-tipped blade to use on an unwelcome guest she is expecting that night. However, Girolamo's thugs kill the messenger and steal the parchment urging Gianfrancesco to flee and stay in hiding until Fiametta has disposed of his rival. Seizing the chance for treachery, Girolamo sends one of his retinue to deliver the invitation he had received from Fiametta, along with a ring.

Naturally, Gianfrancesco is delighted and comes to the palace wearing a carnival mask that hides his true identity. As he enters, the masked Giametta confronts him with a rapier and they parry and thrust until Gianfrancesco backs up against the arras where the Moor is hiding and is fatally stabbed in the back. As his mask falls off, Fiametta realises her mistake and sobs over her lover, as the Moor changes into Death and the second candle burns out.

At the start of `The Story of the Third Light', magician A Hi (Paul Biensteldt) receives a long scroll from the Emperor of China, Djin Schuean Wang (Karl Huszar), asking him to brighten up his birthday celebrations with some astonishing new tricks. In a codicile, the Emperor warns A Hi that any failure to amuse will result in his beheading. Eager to duck the invitation, A Hi asks assistants Tiao Tsien (Dagover) and Liang (Janssen) to desist from kissing long enough to fetch his jade Sunday wand. He uses this to give the missive a serpentine form and casts it on to the air before summoning a magic carpet to take to the skies with his companions.

Their jolly mood is not shared by Wang, who sits grumpily twiddling his elongated fingernails in his palace under the simmering gaze of the imperial archer (Goetzke). Messengers inform him that there is no sign on road or river of A Hi. But Wang spots the carpet flying over head and orders A Hi to land. Aided by Tiao, he produces a miniature army from an empty box. But, when Tiao bows low to offer the gift to the Emperor, he decides that he would rather have her as his present. A Hi produces a fine white horse from a wood carving, but Wang refuses to let Tiao leave. Indeed, when Liang tries to snatch her away, the Emperor orders the executioner (Paul Neumann) to behead him the following morning.

Distressed by the news that Wang has ordered A Hi to make her succumb to his charms, Tiao snaps the magician's wand in half and turns him into a cactus. Realising she has power, she casts a porcine spell on the guards watching over her and then transforms Liang's prison into an elephant so that they can escape. Wang is furious and sends his army in pursuit. But Tiao uses the wand (which gets smaller after each incantation) to create fire sprites that slow down the mounted troops in the smoke-filled forest. However, Wang orders the archer to follow on the magic horse and he gallops through the air to trap the lovers. In a last desperate bid, Tiao turns Liang into a tiger and herself into a multi-armed statue. But the archer kills Liang with one arrow and, while he turns back into his human form, Tiao is left as a statue, with a single tear running down her marble cheek.

As the last candle is doused, the woman falls at Death's knees and implores him to let her paramour live. Taking pity on her, he grants her an hour to find a soul who would be willing to swap places with her lover. Suddenly finding herself back in the pharmacy, as the apothecary knocks the poison out of her hands, the woman asks the old man if he would sacrifice himself for her fiancé. But he drives her from the premises vowing not to lose a day, an hour of a breath to help her. The beggar repeats the same words and, so, she ventures to the hospital to see if one of the sick would be willing to help her. But, even the old ladies who proclaim to crave death refuse to shorten their span and the woman is about to leave when a fire breaks out and quickly spreads through the wards.

The townsfolk for a chain to ferry buckets of water from the fountain, as the patients are led to safety. A new mother (Louisa Lehnert) becomes hysterical when she realises that her baby has been left behind and the woman dashes inside to give the child to Death. However, as he reaches out his arms, she has a change of heart and lowers the newborn in a curtain to the waiting crowd and Death is so moved by her willingness to lose her own life that he takes her to her fiancé and leads their reunited spirits through the wall to an ambiguously better place as midnight strikes.

Co-scripted by Thea von Harbou and subtitled `A German Folk Story in Six Verses', this was the feature that established Fritz Lang among Weimar Germany's leading screen artists and reinforced the vogue for Expressionist melodrama that had been started by Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), whose ending Lang had had a hand in redrafting. The influence of German folklore is readily evident, with the idea of life being a candle being borrowed from the Grimm fable, `Godfather Death'. Lang and Von Harbou also seem to have been influenced in their portmanteau structuring by DW Griffith's Intolerance (1916) and Carl Theodore Dreyer's Leaves From Satan's Book (1920), But it wasn't the light stories that inspired Luis Buñuel to become a film-maker and there is something more intriguing and unsettling about the wraparound narrative. In many ways, it echoes Abel Gance's J'Accuse (1919) in having a procession of departed souls, as most contemporary viewers would still equate loss of life with the recently ended war. Indeed, this could almost be seen as a consolatory parable for those mourning loved ones who perished in the service of the toppled Kaiser. But, by opting for period settings, Lang avoids social commentary and seeks to show in tribute to his much-missed mother how love has remained a constant through the ages.

Budgetary restrictions mean that this Decla-Bioscop picture is rather old-fashioned in technical terms, with the dissolves and superimpositions being no more sophisticated than those created by Georges Méliès a decade earlier. Moreover, Lang keeps the camera variously operated by Fritz Arno Wagner, Erich Nitzschmann and Hermann Saalfrank relatively still. But he makes intelligent use of close-ups, as well as tints and gradations of light and shade to bring a little atmosphere to the studio sets designed by the Caligari trio of Walter Röhrig (the bookend sequences) Hermann Warm (the Arabian Nights and Venetian segments) and Robert Herlth (the Chinese episode). Furthermore, he draws fine performances out of Lil Dagover and Bernard Goetzke, who is perfectly cast as the `Weary Death' of the German title, who takes no pleasure in his onerous duty.

Despite the worthy attempt to introduce some spectacle with the climactic conflagration, this is more an ambitious than an accomplished film and it's not entirely surprising that it was largely ignored by critics and audiences on its initial release and butchered by the American distributor that retitled it Behind the Wall. Yet, as Lang's reputation grew, it was reappraised and left its mark on Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage (1921), Paul Leni's Waxworks, Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad (both 1924), FW Murnau's Faust (1926) and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). Now, nearly a century later, it still looks magnificent and leaves one hoping that other landmarks of this vintage can be revived to ensure that the cineastes of tomorrow get to appreciate silent cinema on the big screen.

Carl Theodor Dreyer supposedly chose to make The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) over biopics of Catherine de Medici and Marie Antoinette by drawing matchsticks. However, he soon became immersed in the material and spent months researching La Pucelle's life before basing his screenplay - which compressed 29 sessions spread over three months into five in a single day - on Pierre Champion's 1921 version of the trial records. Denied the opportunity to use sound, yet still armed with a budget of seven million francs, Dreyer commissioned art directors Hermann Warm and Jean Hugo to build a vast cement castle between Montrouge and Petit Clamart in the Parisian suburbs and hired an abandoned car plant at Billancourt to shoot his interiors. Ultimately, little of these imposing sets were seen, but Dreyer wanted his cast to experience an authentic medieval environment.

In the spring of 1431, 19 year-old Joan of Arc (Renée Falconetti) is captured while fighting for Charles VII against the Anglo-Burgundian alliance occupying France. She is brought to trial before Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon (Eugène Silvain), Canon Jean d'Estivet (André Berley), Vice-Inquisitor Jean Lemaître (Gilbert Dalleu), assessor Nicolas de Houppeville (Jean d'Yd), bailiff Jean Massieu (Antonin Artaud) and Maître Jean Beaupère (Louis Ravet). Intimidated by the dignitaries, Joan promises to tell the truth and admits that she thinks she has been born to save her homeland from its invaders. The bench taunts her about hating the English and follows a question about St Michael by asking why she insists on wearing male attire. She replies that she swore to remain in uniform until her mission is complete and when she hopes that her soul will be saved as a reward for her endeavours, she is accused of blasphemy.

Hoping to disorientate the Maid, the judges take a ring off her finger, read her a letter purporting to be from the king and order her to recite the Lord's Prayer. They ask her if she is in a state of grace and refuse to let her hear mass until she put on women's clothing. Having been humiliated by servants putting a crown on her head, Joan is taken to a dungeon, where she is asked if she fears God. As the spy Nicolas Loyseleur (Nicolas Loyseleur) looks on, she claims she has no reason to doubt His mercy and confidently proclaims she has nothing sinful to confess. Yet, on seeing the torture equipment, Joan passes out and is bled to ease her fever. She refuses communion, as she is convinced it is a temptation sent by Satan and her accusers decide she must acknowledge her crimes or be buried in unconsecrated ground and be sent to Hell.

Terrified by the prospect of losing eternal life, Joan agrees to sign a confession. Yet, while her life is spared, she is so distraught at being excommunicated that she recants almost as soon as her head is shorn. Lamenting the fact she allowed her fear of death to overcome her love of God, she receives the sacraments and prays before being taken to the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, where she is tied to a stake and martyred. She mouths the word `Jesus' before her clothing catches light and the witnesses can barely watch her agony. One old man mourns the passing of a saint and the soldiers retreat into the citadel after dispersing the hostile crowds.

Lillian Gish was briefly considered for the title role before Dreyer saw Renée Falconetti in a boulevard comedy and was convinced that she has the ability to `abstract from reality in order to reinforce its spiritual content'. He filmed her without make-up and reportedly treated her shabbily on set to elicit the right degree of persecuted suffering. But, whatever Dreyer's methods, her display of `realised mysticism' clearly came from within and her sole screen appearance remains one of cinema's greatest.

Filming in strict chronological order, after extensive rehearsal, Dreyer often demanded countless retakes to capture precise emotions. Digging trenches to achieve low-angle perspectives, he had cinematographer Rudolph Maté shoot his typage cast with high-contrast lighting and in tight close-up to emphasise the expressions that best conveyed the unrelenting intensity of Joan's interrogation. However, this is far from the exercise in still photography that some have claimed, as Dreyer made subtle use of pans, tilts, subjective angles, cross-cutting and montage to place the viewer at the heart of Joan's ordeal, which was made all the more disconcerting by the absence of spatial certainty.

Furious that a Danish Protestant had been allowed to make a film about France's Catholic heroine, the Archbishop of Paris colluded with the censors to make numerous cuts to Dreyer's original version. But a few weeks after the premiere, a fire at the UFA studios in Berlin destroyed the original negative and Dreyer was forced to piece together a new edition from takes he had already discarded. Within a year, this edit had also perished in a fire at the G.M. de Boulogne-Billancourt processing laboratory and it wasn't until 1933 that an hour-long variation narrated by radio star David Ross was salvaged from extant prints. However, Dreyer had little time for this or a 1951 restoration by Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, which added classical music to a copy of the 1929 cut found in the Gaumont vault in Paris.

Arnie Krogh of the Danish Film Institute tried to duplicate Dreyer's intentions by patching together scenes from all existing copies. But, in 1981, a workman clearing out a cupboard at the Kikemark Sykehus asylum in Oslo found three cans of film, which proved to contain the original version that Dreyer had first shown to the public at the Cinema Palads in Copenhagen on 21 April 1928. Now, after 85 years, viewers can finally see this remarkable silent picture in all its austerely pristine glory.

Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927) is one of the most fabled and elusive titles in the history of the medium. This recklessly ambitious project was partially scripted by candlelight in Napoleon Bonaparte's old rooms at the palace of Fontainbleu. It took 20 months to shoot between January 1925 and August 1926 and another seven months for Gance and editor Marguerite Beaugé to assemble the four-hour cut shown at the 7 April 1927 premiere at the Palais Garnier home of the Paris Opera and the nine-hour official version that debuted at the Apollo Theatre on 8 May that required such specialist projection equipment that only a handful of venues could accommodate it.

Gance caused problems for himself by revisiting the prints between screenings and his tinkering prevented him from arriving at a definitive release edition. But Gance also had the misfortune to debut his masterpiece as the clamour for talking pictures grew louder following the success of Alan Crossland's The Jazz Singer (1927). Consequently, he was forced to produce a sound version that would appeal to novelty hungry audiences and the strain of keeping up with technological advance eventually took its toll on Gance and his vision.

Gance had originally planned to divide his biopic into six feature-length episodes: Arcole (1782-98); 18 Brumaire (1798-1800); Austerlitz (1804-08); The Retreat From Russia (1809-13); Waterloo (1814-15); and St Helena (1815-21), while an epilogue would recreate the repatriation of his body to France in 1840. But he ran out of money while still recording Napoleon's early career and decided to screen what he had as Napoléon vu par Abel Gance while silent pictures still held sway.

Unfortunately, the critics were lying in wait. Those who weren't confused by the sprawling storyline were hostile to its gauche patriotism, cheap sentimentality, clumsy comedy and naive melodramatics. Léon Moussinac even accused Gance of creating `a Bonaparte for nascent fascists'. But Gance's ambitious bid to shatter the conventions of the classical narrative and the traditional dimensions of the moving picture screen that his epic continued to fascinate film scholars like Kevin Brownlow, who has played a crucial part in restoring a print that was first seen at the Royal Festival Hall in 2000. Complete with Carl Davis conducting his score with a live orchestra, this was the dictionary definition of `event cinema' and it is truly a cause for rejoicing that audiences across the country can finally see this landmark silent on the big screen, where it belongs. As Part One opens, the young Napoleon Bonaparte (Vladimir Roudenko) travels from Corsica to study at the military academy in Brienne-le-Château. Although he forges a friendship with kitchen servant Tristan Fleuri (Nicolas Koline), Napoleon incurs the wrath of bullies Philippeaux (Petit Vidal) and Peccaduc (Roblin). So, during a snowball fight in the college grounds in the winter of 1779-80, the pair bombard Bonaparte with missiles containing stones that cut his head.

Under the watchful gaze of the Minim Fathers who run Brienne, Napoleon launches a daring single-handed attack on the enemy lines and rushes back to his own troops to issue a rallying cry that inspires a daring charge. Watching his men gain the upper hand, Napoleon takes his banner and raises it over the enemy rampart and he is hailed by his comrades for his tactical audacity. Tutor Jean-Charles Pichegru (René Jeanne) is also impressed and asks the victor his name. The boys laugh when he replies in a Corsican accent, but Pichegru assures him that he has a bright future.

Despite his triumph, Napoleon continues to suffer at the hands of Philippeaux and Peccaduc, who kick him in a geography class when he takes exception to the dismissive description of his native island. Feeling homesick, he writes to his family about his travails. But he gets into trouble for keeping letters under his bed and is distraught when one of the monks tears them to pieces. He seeks sanctuary in Fleuri's attic quarters and pets the young eagle he was sent by one of his uncles. When he goes to change its water, however, Philippeaux and Peccaduc sneak into the room and set it free.

Napoleon is beside himself with self-pity and fury and, when no one admits to letting the bird escape, he challenges everyone in the dormitory to a fight and pillow feathers fill the air before Bonaparte is tossed into the snow by one of the fathers. He sits by a cannon in the yard and struggles to hold back the tears. But he allows his emotions to spill over when he spots the eagle in a nearby tree and it flies down at his command.

Napoleon (now played by Albert Dieudonné) has become a lieutenant in the French army by 1792 and he is present at the Club of the Cordeliers when Camille Desmoulins (Robert Vidalin) interrupts proceedings to bring to the attention of Georges Danton (Alexandre Koubitzky), Jean-Paul Marat (Antonin Artaud) and Maximilien Robespierre (Edmond Van Daële) a song written by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (Harry Krimer). It is called `La Marseillaise' and Danton orders De Lisle to perform it. Such is its rousing melody and stirring lyrics that the club members seize copies of the sheet music to launch into their own rendition and Bonaparte tells De Lisle that his anthem will save many a cannon in the heat of battle.

While walking in the narrow streets of Paris, Napoleon sees Joséphine de Beauharnais (Gina Manès) visiting fortune-teller Mademoiselle Lenormand (Carrie Carvalho) with her confidante, Paul Barras (Max Maxudian). Inside, she learns she is going to be a queen, but she wonders how when Danton and his followers are keen to remove Louis XVI from power and proclaim a republic. Indeed, on 10 August 1792, Danton informs the crowd gathered before the National Assembly that the crown has fallen. But the behaviour of the sans culottes disturbs the watching Napoleon and he vows to prevent mob rule from spiralling out of control.

Sadly, he would experience worse scenes while on leave at the family summer home of Les Milelli. Napoleon is delighted to see his mother, Letizia (Eugénie Buffet), as well as his siblings Lucien (Sylvio Cavicchia), Joseph (Georges Lampin) and Élisa (Yvette Dieudonné). But their idyll is shattered when shepherd Santo-Ricci (Henri Baudin) brings the news that Corsican president Pasquale Paoli (Maurice Schutz) is on the verge of surrendering the island to the British.

Galloping around his childhood haunts, Napoleon decides to take a stand as Pozzo di Borgo (Acho Chakatouny) whips up a crowd in Ajaccio to execute Bonaparte for opposing Paoli. As Lucien and Joseph set sail for Calvi on the mainland to raise reinforcements, their brother confronts the patrons at a tavern and he is close to winning them over when Di Borgo arrives to arrest him. Slipping away in the melee, Napoleon passes the town hall and tears down the French flag because the council is passing a resolution to declare war on La Patrie.

Dodging bullets, Napoleon uses a sword to cut through a rope stretched across the road to knock him from his horse. He makes for the shore and finds a small boat on the shingle. However, having pushed it out to sea, he realises it has no oars or a sail and he uses the confiscated flag to catch the wind and drift out to sea. His perilous journey is cross-cut with a fractious meeting of the National Assembly, as Montagnards Danton, Marat and Robsespierre call for the removal of the Girondins from the legislative council and charged with treason. As Napoleon's craft bobs on increasingly threatening waves, the tussle for power becomes more intense. As Napoleon tries to bail water out of his sinking boat, he is spotted by his brothers aboard the French ship, Le Hasard. They haul him aboard and he steers towards the safe harbour where the rest of his family is waiting. The British warship HMS Agamemnon looms on the horizon and a young officer named Horatio Nelson (Olaf Fjord) requests permission to open fire. However, the captain believes Le Hasard is too insignificant to waste the ordnance upon and it is allowed to proceed on its passage with an eagle sitting atop the flagpole.

Two months after Girondin Charlotte Corday (Marguerite Gance) stabs Marat to death in his bath in July 1793, General Jean-François Carteaux (Léon Courtois) confronts a force of 20,000 English, Spanish and Italian troops at Toulon. The newly promoted Captain Bonaparte feels that Carteaux is too weak to lead the French to victory and demands a meeting at the inn run by his old friend, Fleuri. His seven year-old son Marcellin (Serge Freddy-Karl) strides around wearing Napoleon's hat and sword, while his daughter Violine (Annabella) gazes longingly at the handsome young officer. But he is intent on persuading Carteaux to unleash the artillery on the port and raise the siege.

A shell hits the inn and Napoleon remains in the rubble to study some maps. His eagerness is noted by General Jacques François Dugommier (Alexandre Bernard), who listens to his ideas for attacking the alliance. He is also deeply impressed when Napoleon opens fire on the enemy and his unit becomes known as the Battery of Men Without Fear. When his actions boost morale, Dugommier makes Bonaparte commander-in-chief of the artillery and allows him to plan a midnight raid.

As the soldiers prepare to advance, old hand Moustache (Henry Krauss) urges Marcellin (who is now a drummer boy) to be brave because he is six years younger than the heroic Joseph Agricol Viala, who lost his life on the field of honour. Not everyone is as courageous as Marcellin, however, as Antoine Christophe Saliceti (Philippe Hériat) considers the weather too inclement to mount an effective attack. Dugommier agrees, but Napoleon urges him not to withdraw and the English guns are silenced after some ferocious hand-to-hand combat in the teeth of the storm. Furious at the reverse, Admiral Samuel Hood (W. Percy Day) orders the French fleet to be torched before it can be recaptured. Nevertheless, Dugommier is eager to promote Napoleon to brigadier general and he is surprised to find him sleeping under a tree with an eagle watching over him.

Enraged at being humiliated at Toulon, Saliceti returns to Paris and demands that Napoleon is arrested. Having enlisted the support of Georges Couthon (Louis Vonelly) and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (Abel Gance) in having Danton executed, Robespierre suggests offering Napoleon the command of the Parisian garrison so that he can be accused of treachery if he refuses. Meanwhile, Saint-Just arrests Josephine and her ex-husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais (Georges Cahuzac). They are detained in the prison at Les Carmes, where Fleuri is now employed as a jailer. He calls for De Beauharnais and Alexandre presumes he is being summoned, as Josephine appears to be under the protection of General Lazare Hoche (Pierre Batcheff).

Back in Paris, Napoleon is indicted for refusing a posting and Saliceti mocks him for spending more time on a scheme for a canal to Suez than his own defence. However, he knows nothing of Bonaparte's friendship with Fleuri, who instructs clerks Bonnet (Boris Fastovich-Kovanko) and La Bussière (Jean d'Yd) to destroy all the evidence against Napoleon and Josephine. But they are soon sifting through dossiers pertaining to the executions of Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-Just, who have fallen from grace at the Assembly. Marcellin and Violine had watched from the gallery as Jean-Lambert Tallien (Jean Gaudrey) pulled a knife on Robespierre and the furore had convinced Violine not to attempt to assassinate Saint-Just with the pistol she had smuggled into the chamber.

At liberty once more, Napoleon resists Aubry's order to join Hoche in suppressing compatriots in the Vendée and is placed in charge of a map-making detail as punishment. Typically, however, he uses his time wisely and draws up audacious plans for an attack on Italy, although they are discounted as idiotic by General Schérer (Alexandre Mathillon). Undaunted, Napoleon pastes them to the window of the lodging he shares with Captain Marmont (Pierre de Canolle), Sergeant Junot (Jean Henry) and the actor Talma (Roger Blum), who all have faith in his ability to bring glory and justice to France.

Amidst reports of a royalist uprising in October 1795, Josephine persuades Barras to send Napoleon and Major Joachim Murat (Genica Missirio) to regain control. He survives an assassination attempt by Di Borgo, who is wounded when Fleuri accidentally fires his musket. But, even though he arrests Di Borgo and Saliceti, Napoleon frees them and Joseph Fouché (Guy Favière) confides in Josephine that the new commander of the Army of the Interior is making history on a daily basis.

Fascinated by the rising star, Josephine watches Napoleon play chess at a ball held at the former prison of Les Carmes. Her beauty catches his eye and Thérésa Tallien (Andrée Standard) and Madame Juliette Récamier (Suzy Vernon) detect a spark between them, as the revellers abandon themselves to wild dancing. The bond is reinforced when Napoleon allows 14 year-old Eugène de Beauharnais (Georges Hénin) to keep his executed father's sword and Josephine is charmed by his gauche efforts to make small talk when she comes to thank him.

Aware of his shortcomings as a lover, Napoleon consults his old roommate Talma and begins paying daily court to Josephine. Violine is heartbroken to see her hero falling for another woman and reluctantly agrees to become part of Josephine's household. But Josephine is prepared to use her contacts to help Bonaparte and he is appointed to the command of the Italian campaign at the behest of Barras. Despite his gratitude, Napoleon becomes so preoccupied with planning the invasion that he is two hours late for his wedding on 9 March 1796. Recognising that he has another date with destiny, his bride forgives him for the brevity of the ceremony and embraces her husband as Violine kisses an effigy of her lost love in the next room. As Josephine tends to the small shrine she has created to Napoleon, he strolls around the deserted National Assembly chamber. The spirits of those who drove the Revolution appear before him and Danton and Saint-Just demand to know his intentions for the nation. While they debate, the fallen unite in singing `La Marseillaise', which sends him south to Nice with the resolution to seize his moment. He writes to Josephine, who is joined in prayer by Violine in front of the little shrine.

Arriving at Albenga, Bonaparte finds his troops short of rations and his officers questioning his authority. He reviews his army and instils a patriotism and pride in promising that the campaign will being them honour, glory and wealth. Fleuri, who is now a soldier, tries to ingratiate himself with his friend. But Napoleon is too focused on his future to revisit the past and he leads his men to victory at Montenotte. Further success follows at Montezemolo and, as he looks down from the Alps with thoughts of Josephine filling his mind, Napoleon envisions the triumph of the Grand Army in future conflicts and his eagle inspires them to victory as the screen is filled with the blue, white and red of the French tricolour.

With its famous Polyvision triptych, this climactic sequence set Napoleon apart from anything audiences had seen before. Watching the outer screens open out with the panoramic view is a huge thrill and one wonders how many UK venues will be able to do it justice. Gance shot the footage by stacking three cameras on top of one another and pointing one straight ahead and the others to the left and right. It was a bold gambit at a time when anamorphic lenses were too crude to permit the vista to be photographed with a single camera. But Gance was prepared to take technical risks to achieve an unprecedented level of spectacle and to place the audience at the heart of the action.

During the snowball fight, therefore, he strapped a camera to a sleigh to generate the illusion of subjective motion and made use of a piece of apparatus dubbed a `fusil viseur' that placed a mirror in front of the lens to record rapid movements. By employing the accelerated style of montage that had made La Roue (1923) so exciting, Gance was able to capture the raw energy of the Brienne battle. The skirmish in the dormitory (which anticipates the one in Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite, 1933) is equally visceral and Gance made inspired use of a system of tiny shutters inside the camera to mask areas of the frame to create a split-screen effect merging up to 16 simultaneous images.

He displayed similar ingenuity in filming the horseback chase on Corsica with three wide-angled cameras (two on galloping horses, one in a speeding car), while he achieved a sense of immediacy by strapping the camera to the operator's chest to approximate the shakicam effect that has become so familiar since the nouvelle vague. Gance returned to this method to glide between the figures on the dance floor during the ball for the victims of the Reign of Terror. Even more audaciously, he lashed a camera to a swinging pendulum to match the rocking of Napoleon's tempest-tossed boat with the shifting momentum of the debate in the Convention.

While he commended Gance's inventiveness (he only decided against experimenting with colour and stereoscopy as they would distract from the narrative themes), Stanley Kubrick (who never realised a long-cherished ambition to make his own Bonaparte biopic) had little time for the more novelettish aspects of the picture. Many critics have reservations about the clumsy comic relief and mawkish melodramatics associated with the fictional Fleuri family, while the romance between Napoleon and Josephine has a cornball coyness about it that sits awkwardly with the passionate intensity of the political manoeuvrings and the grim reality of battle scenes in which soldiers drown in mud and are crushed by runaway wagons while advancing against a hail of musket fire. Yet, it's also easy to see why some accused Gance of hagiography in his depiction of Napoleon and in lauding the authoritarian streak in his personality.

Perhaps the rise of Hitler in Germany the year before Gance issued his 1934 sound edition unsettled French audiences. But, despite the re-staged scenes and dubbed dialogue, the stylistic shift towards poetic realism made the 140-minute film seem arch and grandiose and Gance felt compelled to join forces with director-producer Claude Lelouch and return to the material in 1971 for Bonaparte et la Revolution. By this time, Kevin Brownlow was two years into a 14-year restoration project that resulted in a four hours and 50-minute version being presented at the Telluride Film Festival in September 1979. The 89 year-old Gance had witnessed this triumphant revival and its success led to the British Film Institute collaborating with the Cinémathèque Française to allow Brownlow to add another 23 minutes to his 1982 re-cut. Brownlow was not alone in his fascination with an epic that has been screened in some 22 different forms. On taking receipt of a seven-hour version in 1929, MGM in Hollywood reduced it to 106 minutes. But Gance himself managed to lose the original negative in fashioning his `vu et entendu' edition and sought to make amends by restoring the Polyvision finale for a revival at the celebrated arthouse, Studio 28, in 1953.

That year also saw Marie Epstein and Henri Langlois embark upon the piecing together of their `Museum Copy'. Several years later, Francis Ford Coppola asked his composer father Carmine to write a score for the 70mm version curated by Robert A. Harris. But the biggest debt is owed to Brownlow, who followed a 328-minute revision in 2000 with the 330-minute version that is now being sponsored by the BFI. Shortly after the 1927 premiere, Gance proclaimed that he had `made a tangible effort toward a somewhat richer and more elevated form of cinema'. No one would doubt his claim. But Jean Cocteau was closer to the mark when he declared `there is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso'. Maybe attention should now switch to compiling a definitive edition of this four-hour masterwork.