Napoleon (BFS documentary series)
Picture: C+
Sound: C ROM-only Extras:
B- Series: B
So many stories about Napoleon Bonaparte have been written
as semi-fictional, but few of those seem to have worked. Telling the story as history straight-out
would seem even harder, but that is exactly what happens in Napoleon – The
Myth, The Battles, The Legend (2001), an astonishingly detailed and
researched six-part documentary mini-series made in Britain that runs about 290
minutes long. Just when I though the
under-hour-long A&E Biography installment had done a decent job,
this version just blows all previous non-dramatizations away.
The six chapters include The Early Years and The
Early Campaigns, which drag a bit, but have much to offer, then DVD One
ends with Imperial Zenith, which really is uncompromised in getting to
the heart of what made Napoleon a legend.
DVD Two picks up with The Spanish Ulcer, marking the earliest
signs of the first crack in Napoleon’s armor.
This is also great, followed by Winter in Russia, where the
Emperor gets overconfident and starts to not think things through. Elementary thought is replaced by blatant
self-will, which leads tragically to Waterloo. That would be the legendary defeat that would bring him down once
and for all.
Just explaining that is not sufficient enough to explain
how well this documentary series is done.
Though the videotaped footage manipulated to look like quilted images of
history come to life gets played out early, the heart of this series involves
its detail, the experts who host the series by default, constantly sampled and
edited together to match each others exceptional observations in proper
chronological order, and the rare drawings and paintings collected together
like never before.
This approach works better than the Ken Burns/PBS
approach, which uses too many stills, thinks history is one flat road, and may
even believe it is infallible. Those
history mini-series are well researched too, but they tend to boggle down
somewhat with a lack of vibrancy and an idea that they have a definitive track
on history. By comparison, this is more
exciting and the subject matter does not hurt.
Extras credit goes to writers Malcolm Seymour and Simon Eales, who
obviously care about their subject.
The picture is analog PAL color video and is not bad,
while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound is average, but clear enough to catch
all the history being explained. The
timeline and Napoleon memoirs by his private secretary are the only extras, and
only are available if you can access a DVD-ROM, which are interesting and
further enhance the content of the main program. Too bad this could not fit normally, so more people could access
it.
Many feature films that cover napoleon are just now coming
out on DVD all of the sudden, likely inspired by A&E’s successful
mini-series box release, but this box came out even before and may well be the
best non-fiction version of Napoleon we will see in a long time to come,
including the contributions of a society all about the legend. That makes this one of the best special
interest boxed-set DVDs to date.
- Nicholas Sheffo
