With the news of this silent Epic classic being screened next March in Oakland California COMPLETELY RESTORED, at 5 and a half hours, I thought it was appropriate to watch my VHS copy and post about it.

It is a truly Marvelous work of cinema.
Stanley Kubrick called it crude, and didn't like it all that much, but he was also a film director. He could see how it could be much better, indeed, he was fascinated with Napoleon Bonaparte and was working on making "the greatest film never made" when he had to ditch it due to logistics and the inconvenient appearance of Rod Steiger as the French Emperor in Waterloo.
Abel Gance's silent opus is the only real epic attempt at Napoleon's bio we have. It's odd that Napoleon hasn't been given a slew of cinematic treatments. Dracula has, and he's complete fiction!
Indeed, Napoleon said that his life would've made a good book. Kubrick noted that "had he known about movies, he would've said movie".

Abel Gance had some serious ambition. This was supposed to be a 6-parter, a LARGE CANVAS.
When you realize that this film only covers Napoleon from his youth at Brienne college to the 1796 victory in the Italian campaign, you kind of wish they had the resources to make the whole film.
Because what we have here is quite good for it's time.
A lot of time and effort and care went into this production. It's very obvious to film students. Costumes, stagings, crowd scenes, action-packed horse chases, battles, charges with flags, storms at sea, dramatic speeches and scenarios in the convention hall and Assembly, the full spirit of the French Revolution was tried to be caught on camera. It's an admirable job here, with interesting characters. Probably nowhere near their real-life counterparts, but this is a movie. It's a dramatization or imagining of what actually took place, based on historical records.