WATERLOO: Blu-ray (De Laurentiis, Mosfilms, Columbia, 1970) ViaVision 'Imprint' Edition
The ‘unofficial’ follow-up to Sergei Bondarchuk’s resplendently
prodigious War and Peace (1966-67), Waterloo (1970) – also
directed by Bondarchuk, became something of a cause célèbre for its producer,
Dino De Laurentiis, who had, at first, envisioned it as the perfect passion
project for his good luck charm, director, John Huston. Waterloo ought
to have co-starred Peter O’Toole as Wellington and Richard Burton as Napoleon.
And only in hindsight can one suggest with those two box office titans at the
helm Waterloo just might have emerged as one for the ages – or, at
least, its own ‘stand-alone’ piece of dramatic cinema. Instead, the picture today
just feels like a prolonged addendum to the ‘other’ aforementioned Bondarchuk
masterpiece – offering more of the same. Alas, by the time Waterloo hit screens,
several concessions had been made to both stifle and, arguably, emasculate its
impact. First, to fall by the waste side, was Burton, left to pursue other
projects, and withdrawing even from consideration after De Laurentiis
encountered chronic delays. His
departure was followed by O’Toole’s, and then, Huston’s – although Huston did
not ‘leave’ the project, so much as he was rather unceremoniously dumped after
De Laurentiis realized he needed foreign investors to get his titanic vision
off the ground. And Waterloo, if nothing else, is picture-making on a
spellbinding and massive scale. The battle sequences alone are a miracle of
staging for which only Bondarchuk was well acquainted at the time.
It also made practical sense for the picture to be
shot in Russia (originally, it looked as though Bulgaria would suffice) as that
nation’s state-run film company, Mosfilms, had not only produced War and
Peace with a ‘money is no object’ approach to its authenticity, but also
had retained a good many of the period costumes from this colossus, to be
recycled herein. Lastly, Russia was the only country able to amass the ‘extras’
– both military and otherwise, to fill Bondarchuk’s creative lens with one
marvelous composition of thronging masses after the next. Even so, Waterloo
would rely on ‘dummy’ mannequins, interspersed with the more than 40,000 live players
to augment its girth during the battle sequences. De Laurentiis, whose nick-name
among the picture-making class was Dino De-citta (a riff on Cinecittà –
Mussolini’s state-sanctioned Italian film empire – in the post-war era, to become
a mecca for international movie companies eager to exploit its tax incentives)
was determined to authentically recreate history, down to its last detail. In
the wake of Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole’s departure, De Laurentiis recast
the roles of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington with legendary character
actor, Rod Steiger, and, accomplished Canadian thespian, Christopher Plummer
who, despite having broken through to popular appeal in the U.S. in pictures
like The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), The Sound of Music
(1965) and The Battle of Britain (1969) was hardly consider an A-lister in
O’Toole’s class. As production on Waterloo commenced, it became clear it
was shaping up to be a movie of tasks rather than tastes, and, indeed, the
resultant distributor, Paramount Pictures, bailed in the eleventh hour, having
already invested $7 million in the reported $28 million budget, leaving
distribution in the U.S. to Columbia Pictures instead.
Perhaps the most regrettable impact incurred by Waterloo’s
disappointing box office was the cancelation of Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon
– a project that, at least by Kubrick’s surviving notations, promised to be, if
half as ambitious, then twice as artistic. Despite Waterloo’s reputation
today as a dud, it is important to remember the movie was booked months in
advance of its premiere, and would continue to rake in sizable profits in the
U.K. and the rest of Europe where its old-time picture-making was still greatly
admired. While its Euro-intake ranked Waterloo as the 5th most
popular ‘ticket reserve’ of the year, in the U.S., its paltry $1 million dollar
take fell far short of the $4 million Columbia had lent to the cause, and, likewise,
had sincerely hoped to recoup – and then some. To accommodate De Laurentiis’
globe-trotting venture, shot in Italy and the Soviet Union, whole portions of
the Ukraine were given over to a colossal re-staging of the penultimate battle;
fields leveled and seeded with crops of barley and rye, acres planted with 5,000
trees, and, several hillsides artificially landscaped a whole year in advance,
all in an endeavor to make the thought-numbing spectacle as real as possible. Bondarchuk
also set about staging some of the most impressive stunt work, his attention to
detail resulting in the loss of an untold number of horses used in the epic
charge. As Russia had no equivalent to the U.S. ASPCA or U.K.’s Animal Aid, no
such ‘humanitarian’ rights were ascribed these valiant steeds, a goodly sum
sacrificed and/or having to be euphemized during production, necessitating nearly
6-minutes of scenes depicting the staggering cruelty inflicted upon these
animals to be shorn from the final cut before Waterloo could be shown in
either country.
Recognizing the importance of an international cast,
to gain ‘world-wide’ interest in the picture, in addition to Steiger and
Plummer, De Laurentiis hired Orson Welles to appear briefly as Louis XVIII of
France. Having already lost his voice to cancer, Jack Hawkins nevertheless
appeared as General Thomas Picton (with a voice dub for his speaking scenes),
and, Virginia McKenna (in a part originally proposed for either Sophia Lauren
or Julie Christie) was grandfathered in as Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of
Richmond, with esteemed character actors, Dan O'Herlihy and Michael Wilding,
respectively cast as Marshal Michel Ney, and, Major-General The Honorable Sir
William Ponsonby. Initially, De Laurentiis had hoped to include noted British
actor, Trevor Howard as Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstatt.
For one reason or another, Howard declined and was eventually recast with
Russian actor, Serghej Zakhariadze – whose name meant absolutely nothing
outside of the U.S.S.R. The rest of the principles were all accomplished in
their own right, but whose reputations, even collectively, alas, leant little
to the star-drawing cache: Rupert Davies as Colonel Alexander Gordon, Philippe
Forquet (Brigadier-General Charles de la Bédoyère), Gianni Garko (Major-General
Antoine Drouot), Ivo Garrani (Marshal Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult), Ian Ogilvy (Colonel
Sir William Howe De Lancey), Terence Alexander (Lieutenant-General Henry Paget),
Andrea Checchi (Soldier of the Old Guard), Donal Donnelly (Corporal O’Connor), Charles
Millot (Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy), Eughenj Samoilov (Brigadier-General
Pierre Cambronne), Oleg Vidov (Tomlinson), Charles Borromel (Mulholland), and
on, and on…too many magnificent actors to list herein, all playing their part to
perfection.
Waterloo was actually conceived with high spirits as a mid-sixties’
roadshow epic in a decade where such elephantine offerings were plentiful and
highly anticipated. Had Waterloo hit screens in 1965, it might have been
regarded as one of the finest spectacles of its generation. And indeed, De
Laurentiis’ initial plan was for a 4-hr. epic, complete with overture,
intermission, entr’acte and exit music. However, as the age of these
super-colossi had faded by 1969, the year the picture actually went into
production, Columbia Pictures ordered De Laurentiis to scale down his ambitions.
Waterloo would emerge as a 2 ½ hr. movie.
Eager to capitalize on the picture’s impressive production values, Columbia published
a lavishly appointed, full-color commemorative ‘guide’ to accompany the
premiere engagement – touting the challenges De Laurentiis had faced to find
viable backers, and also making much of the picture’s Anglo-Soviet alliance,
its fictionally accounted for £12 million budget (equivalent to $38.3 million
in the U.S. then), and Mosfilm’s sizable investment of £4 million, plus nearly
17,000 soldiers of the Soviet Army, including a full brigade of cavalry, engineers
and laborer’s to bulldoze the rolling Ukrainian farmland outside of Uzhhorod,
lay 5-miles of road, and reconstruct four historically accurate buildings. As the
battlefield sequence not only proved a costly, but logistic nightmare, Bondarchuk
employed 5 Panavision cameras, shooting simultaneously to limit the number of
takes; some at ground level, others, mounted to 100-ft. towers, and even one strapped
to a helicopter, sweeping down from on high, to capture the magnificent debacle
of war, shot in the sweltering heat of mid-summer.
Actual filming took 28 weeks, including 16 days delay,
due to inclement weather. Production then relocated to Italy’s Royal Palace of
Caserta, where an epic ball was staged, rumored to have been lit by 4,000
candles (the actual ball was hosted in a barn). In all, the jest was made that Bondarchuk, in addition
to his formidable reputation as Russian’s premiere film-maker, was also a ‘general’
commanding the seventh-largest army in the world. Indeed, Bondarchuk’s approach
to picture-making was decidedly militaristic, attacking the massive sequences
with all the verve and precision of a great strategist meticulously prepared to
go into battle. Months of training preceded the actual shoot, Bondarchuk
putting his army through the paces of Napoleonic strategies and formations,
educating these modern-age militia on the artful use of sabers, bayonets, muskets
and canons. As though in preparation for war, these extras were force-marched
to a makeshift wardrobe facility to don their French, British or Prussian
uniforms, and, in barely 15-min., ready to begin the day’s shoot, receiving their
instructions from Bondarchuk via four interpreters and walkie-talkies. Despite
Bondarchuk and De Laurentiis’ verve for authenticity, Waterloo features some
inaccuracies worth noting. For starters, Marshal Soult is depicted, encouraging
Napoleon to abdicate. As Soult was off commanding the defense of Toulouse
against Wellington's Army, his presence here would not have been possible.
Also, the Duchess of Richmond informs Wellington she does not wish her daughter
to wear ‘black’ – the mark of a widow – before she wears ‘white’ – the trappings
of a bride. Alas, the tradition of wearing white was not established until
Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert in 1840.
Also, in exercising creative license, Ponsonby,
commander of the Union Brigade is seen informing the Earl of Uxbridge that his
father was killed in battle by French lancers. In reality, Ponsonby’s father was
a politician who died of natural causes in England, the tale Ponsonby tells, instead,
a bit of foreshadowing of his own fate. Meanwhile, the Duke of Gordon is
depicted as leading the Highlanders into battle. But this character is actually
an amalgam of various heroes from the house of Gordon: the real Duke, founder/colonel,
and, the Duchess of Richmond’s father, who saw no active service during the
Napoleonic Wars; his son, the Duchess' brother, the Marquis of Huntly who,
again, held no command in the campaign, the Duchess’ 23-yr.-old son, the Earl
of March, who did serve as a Major and aide de camp to the Duke of
Wellington, and finally, Sir Alexander Gordon, brother of the Earl of Aberdeen.
Lord Hay, depicted as fallen during the French cavalry retreat, actually fell
at the Battle of Quatre Bras, two days earlier, while General Pierre Cambronne,
depicted as another casualty, was only knocked unconscious, later captured by
Colonel Hugh Halkett, and, after the war, wed to a Scottish nurse who tended his
war wounds. But perhaps the greatest inaccuracy in the movie is the battle’s
staging. In reality, a torrential downpour had turned the fields to mud, making
the gallant charge on horseback virtually impossible. Nevertheless, Waterloo
infers such a charge took place, borrowing its inspiration from Elizabeth
Thompson's 1881 painting, Scotland Forever!
Given the exhilaration infused in these battle sequences,
one can almost forgive Bondarchuk his artistic license. Waterloo begins
in 1814, with French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte facing certain defeat from the
combined forces of the United Kingdom, Austria, Prussia and Russia. Begrudgingly,
Napoleon abdicates at the behest of his marshals and is promptly exiled to the
isle of Elba with 1,000 loyalists. Defiantly, he escapes and makes his return
to France. Marshal Ney, under Louis XVIII’s authority, is tasked with
recapturing Napoleon. Instead, Ney and his army defect, forcing the King into
exile and marking Napoleon’s triumphant return into Paris. The Prussian Karl
Freiherr von Müffling (John Savident) interrupts the
Duchess of Richmond's ball, forewarning the Duke of Wellington that Napoleon
has invaded Belgium and defeated the Allied forces. Recognizing this strategy
and its devastating repercussions, Wellington elects to halt the Grande Armée
at Waterloo. French and British forces meet for the first time at Quatre-Bras,
defeating the Prussians at Ligny. Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher rejects the
counsel of his Chief of Staff, ordered to retreat. Meanwhile, angered by Ney’s
allowance, to let Wellington honorably withdraw, Napoleon directs 30,000 men,
under Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy, to pursue Blücher and keep the Prussians
from rejoining the British, while he leads his remaining forces against
Wellington.
Delayed by a hellish thunderstorm, the battle at
Waterloo is kicked off by French canon fire and a diversionary infantry attack
on Wellington's right flank. Napoleon then attacks the Allied left but is
thwarted by General Picton, who delays Napoleon, but is killed in battle.
Ponsonby's cavalry pursues the French, but underestimate their position,
becoming isolated from the rest of the Allied forces where they are ruthlessly
slaughtered by Napoleon's lancers. Rather than endure this humiliation, Ponsonby
commits suicide. The sting of battle momentarily overcomes Napoleon, who withdraws
with stomach pain, leaving Ney in command. An epic blunder on Ney’s part causes
the cavalry to incur many causalities. Infuriated, Napoleon rebukes his
marshals. Napoleon’s singular hope now – and, as history teaches, his epic misfire
– is he believes Wellington's line has been worn down. Indeed, the British
strongpoint, La Haye Sainte, has fallen. However, as Napoleon’s Imperial Guard march
for the decisive blow, they are ambushed by Maitland's Guards Division, camouflaged
in the grass – a crushing blow to French morale. Refusing surrender, the final
square of the French Imperial Guard is annihilated by Wellington’s close-range
canon fire. Afterward, Wellington surveys the epic carnage with disdain,
explaining that, ‘next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won’.
Indeed, there is no honor in victory, nor in defeat, as Napoleon, who previous professed
he would sacrifice his own life for his men, is now forcibly carted off in
abject disgrace, departing for Paris.
Waterloo is a picture so staggeringly rich in its production
values, its failure to entertain as either a war/actioner or period costume
drama is doubly amplified and hugely embarrassing. The picture seems to suffer
from a dearth in star power, despite brilliant performances given by Rod
Steiger and Christopher Plummer. Nino Rota and Wilfred Josephs’ score is
curiously lacking in any memorable themes. While Armando Nannuzzi’s
cinematography is first rate, it’s Bondarchuk’s direction, coupled with a
rather ineffectual screenplay by H. A. L. Craig, Vittorio Bonicelli, Mario
Soldati and Bondarchuk himself, that belies the ambitions with which De
Laurentiis tackled the project at the outset. The battle comes off with a resplendent
thud as its expertly staged vignettes pile up, overwhelming with one bloody
coup lain in devastation upon the next. Worse, there is something of a distinct
note of ennui creeping in from the peripheries of the screen, as though
Bondarchuk, well-aware he has covered this ground already – and to far better
effect in War and Peace, is resigned merely to provide more of the same.
In hindsight, it is the absence of War and Peace’s ridiculously
cost-prohibitive elephantiasis that most crushingly afflicts and affects Waterloo.
Deprived of De Laurentiis’ original vision for a sprawling 4-hr. road show
epic, the picture now plays like a fat man put on a crash diet – decidedly streamlined,
though lacking the ballast of a truly ‘big picture’ – instead, distilled, and
merely, to a little movie with some very big scenes.
Drawing his camera lens into Napoleon’s sphere of
influence has, ironically, bludgeoned the historical impact of this massively
influential political figure. We never see ‘the great man’ for who and what he
is; Steiger’s motivations, top-heavy on ego, and very featherweight on the
longevity of what follows his self-delusion, and, re-invigorated thirst for
war. Bondarchuk, who was in complete command of War and Peace’s $100
million budget, is swamped herein, or at the very least, grotesquely enamored
by all the ill-gotten gains $25 million can buy Waterloo. The result is
a movie where the principals do not fare much better, or with any more
distinction, than the hoards that surround them. And investing the screen with buckets
of blood, both animal and human, the panorama instead gives way to cheap
pantomime, incapable of holding our attention for very long. A few bits of
cleverly mounted dialogue afford us the opportunity to reconsider Waterloo
as something marginally better than a stultified grand illusion, cleaved from
that mid-sixties’ road show era in which such costly excursions were not only
anticipated with great excitement, but celebrated as monumentally spendthrift
works of art. In its visualized deportment, Waterloo is undeniably
impressive. Without the benefit of CGI, and relying exclusively on the sheer
girth of manpower, augmented by several hundred mannequins to fill in the gaps
during master shots, Bondarchuk has managed to satisfy a certain sect of the
cinema-going population; historians, mostly, who attend such movies, driven to
orgasmic ecstasy for the sheer size of it all, merely to pick apart its inaccuracies,.
In telling the story of Napoleon, a short man on a white charger, size matters,
I suppose. But so too does story, and there just is not enough of it here to command
– even at a glance.
Bondurchuk’s dim view of Napoleon is immeasurably counterbalanced
by Rod Steiger’s credible performance. And yet, here too, we find Steiger
relying more on the clichés of his actor’s acumen, those protuberant and deadly
glances, a turned-down scowl of a mouth, bursts of rage reduced to arrogant murmurs.
His counterpart, Chris Plummer’s Wellington, is of the stiff-britches archetype,
and with enough starch in his drawers to threaten his vigor. What is lacking
here is the psychological underlay to make us care about what happens to either
character. While the actors are irrefutable ‘class acts’ of their generation,
neither is given the opportunity to explore their larger-than-life alter egos.
Instead, we get a lot of soliloquizing, Napoleon confiding, if only to himself,
Wellington possess two admirable qualities - caution, and courage. But what is
behind these motivators? Ah, now, here is what never gets explored, either
pictorially, in the script, or conveyed by the actors. Instead, battle fatigue
sets in, then wholly takes over, anesthetizing the audience in a brilliant
overview of red-and-blue-coat fanatics, blindly charging into the breech; Napoleon’s
legacy ambushed by the Prussians with an oddly Wagnerian whiff of formaldehyde.
Waterloo is not without its
virtues. But in the end, these take the proverbial ‘backseat’ to the picture’s
vices, to contribute to its overriding, and overreaching failure to ignite our
interests in these men who made a grand hot mess in international diplomacy.
Waterloo arrives on Blu-ray from ViaVision, as part of their Imprint
label – and, the only title in their initial spate of hi-def offerings to hail
from the Sony back catalog. Interestingly, the elements culled together here have
held up remarkably well. The expansive Panavision frame is fully saturated with
rich and vibrant colors, a light smattering of film grain looking indigenous to
its source, some excellent contrast and a considerable amount of fine detail. Flesh
tones tend to lean toward the pinkish slant, but not to egregious levels.
Occasionally, scenes also seem softly focused. But again, I suspect this to be
indicative of the original cinematography and not any fault of this 1080p mastering
effort. Minor hints of age-related wear and tear appear, but do not distract on the whole. The 5.1 DTS audio is rather aggressively channeled and does a splendid
job of enveloping the viewer during the battle sequences. Dialogue is
directionalized and, on occasion, can sound quite tinny, even strident. While
ViaVision’s commitment to extras elsewhere in their Blu-ray launch has been
fairly commendable, we get only a featurette from Sheldon Hall to accompany
this release. But Hall, at just under 40-mins. manages, not only to contextualize
the importance of this movie, but also chronicle, with considerable detail, its
creation, and the motivations of the men who saw it to fruition. This is a wonderful
piece. Bottom line: Waterloo is a gargantuan thing that tends to suffer
from its own over-inflated production values. That said, it is definitely worth
a second glance on Blu-ray – especially since Sony has taken the time to
provide ViaVision with a fairly impressive hi-def transfer. Judge and buy
accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
1
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