If you ever wondered what kicked off the fad for having live orchestras playing at screenings of older films, you might be even more surprised to discover that Napoleon (1927) was the cause. And, for that matter, created the “event” movie, another contemporary buzzword that appears to indicate a limited-time-only showing. Abel Gance’s picture also set up another template, one that every director and critic ascribed to in their thousands, the restoration. For, in one fell swoop, the revival of this picture in 1981 after over half a century of neglect, turned restoration into an event, worthy of acres of newspaper articles, hi-hat premieres, and subsequent profitable release in both the theatrical and ancillary pipeline.
Equally, as luck would have it, Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927), truly was an event, a silent epic, the last section projected across three screens (the famed triptych, precursor of Cinerama and 70mm), road-shown with a full orchestra and ticket prices as high as $20. It became the “must-see” cultural happening of the year. American journalists gave director Francis Coppola virtually all the credit and he was certainly due everything that went with the bold showmanship and the financial risk, underwritten by his Zoetrope company, of launching the film in America’s largest cinema, the Radio City Music Hall in New York, with a complete score (incorporating classical music) by his father Carmine and the aforementioned full orchestra.
But in fact, the actual restoration had been carried out in Britain by silent film expert Kevin Brownlow – author of The Parade’s Gone By and director of It Happened Here (1965), the documentary Abel Gance, The Charm of Dynamite (1969) and Winstanley (1976) – who had compiled his version from eleven different sources including the Cinematheque in Paris, an MGM print and a seventeen-reel version from a private collector.
Thanks to Brownlow, Napoleon became “The Greatest Reissue Story Ever Told.”
Why? Because it was the result of obsession and passion, emotions every artist shares with every cinephile. Brownlow first came across Napoleon as a fifteen-year-old, and although he only glimpsed a few fragments, it was enough to trigger a quest that was to last nearly thirty years. Ironically, it was thanks to a quirky French invention that Brownlow encountered the Gance masterpiece. Where other countries adapted the 8mm format for showing abridged features at home, the French projected these films on a 9.5mm gauge.
After being gifted such a projector for his eleventh birthday, Brownlow started hunting down and purchasing silent films. In 1954, at the age of fifteen, disappointed by Jean Epstein’s Lion des Mongols (1924) he asked for a replacement and was offered two reels of a movie of which he had never heard – Napoleon vu par Abel Gance. It proved a revelation. He was “converted as surely as Paul on the road to Damascus.” He found exhilarating the “rapid cutting and swirling camera movement…and the magic of the visuals were exceptional.” From scouring junk shops and advertising in magazines, he assembled other reels and began showing a 90-minute version to family, friends and other film lovers. Even when the British National Film Archive turned down the opportunity to view the picture Brownlow, undeterred, wrote to Gance and, by happy coincidence in 1955, was invited to meet the director at the British Film Institute.
The accepted version of the Gance story was that Napoleon was a neglected masterpiece, but that was not strictly true. If the parade had passed him by, it was not for want of trying. Napoleon was revived (although primarily in France) as Napoleon Bonaparte in 1935 and in 1953-1955 on the back of his original technological innovations and other films about the French Emperor. In directing the silent picture, Gance had anticipated the arrival of sound and made his actors speak actual dialogue which later facilitated dubbing. The 1935 sound reissue (140 minutes including new footage), partly piggybacked on a new film about Napoleon written by Mussolini.
The next revival owed everything to recognition of his part in creating the first wide screen. Another French inventor Henri Chretien, inspired by Gance’s triptych, had invented what Twentieth Century Fox marketed as CinemaScope. While delighting in Chretien’s process, French journalists recognized Gance’s contribution. In 1953, when Twentieth Century Fox toured Cinemascope throughout Europe one port of call was the Venice Film Festival where the organizers “planned to surprise those who think widescreen is a new thing” by showing Napoleon on the CinemaScope screen.
Gance timed public demonstrations of his process (called Polyvision) to coincide with the launch of The Robe. The arrival of Cinerama also sent journalists delving into the past. However, Gance’s film had to wait until 1955 for another commercial outing, when it rode in on the heels of Sacha Guitry’s phenomenally successful Napoleon (the most expensive French film ever made and a box office smash) and enjoyed a two-year run at the Studio 28 arthouse in Montmartre aided by the releases of Desiree (1954) starring Marlon Brando and King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956). Independent distributor Tomas J. Brand acquired the U.S. rights in 1954, hoping to interest Cinerama in showing the movie as a “spectacle.” Gance toured his process, renamed Magirama, through France in 1956 but his comeback venture Austerlitz (1960) with an all-star cast of Orson Welles, Claudia Cardinale, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Caron and Vittorio de Sica flopped in the U.S.
And there, pretty much, the matter lay, the parade now racing past Gance, until 1969 when, separately, Brownlow, using the facilities of the British Film Institute, began work on restoring the silent picture, while French film director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman), who owned a cinema devoted to classics, purchased the rights and with funding from the French government released in 1971 (the 150th anniversary of Napoleon’s death) the 235-minute sound version Bonaparte and the Revolution, with some new scenes shot by Gance, who had reworked other scenes and added a color preface. Outside of France, it was destined for the rarified atmosphere of the film festival circuit, turning up in Rotterdam in 1972, Boulogne in 1972, the University of California in 1973, Paris again in 1973, not reaching New York till 1976.
Brownlow was aghast at this version, which had, in effect, been butchered by its maker, but after running out of money to complete his version turned in 1975 to the British National Film Archive which made a master print. The U.S. rights were purchased by Image Film Archive in 1975, which, with the New York Museum of Modern Art, purchased the rights to the MGM negative which contained several sections never seen before and working with Brownlow produced the five-and-a-half hour silent shown at the Telluride Film Festival in late summer 1979 in the presence of the director on a giant exterior screen erected by mountaineers for a screening beginning at nine o’clock at night. This edition, with music by Carl Davis, was the highlight of the London Film Festival in November 1980.
Interesting though all this was to the film buff, it was not going to make headlines across America. That was where Coppola’s marketing genius came in. He saw the necessity of creating an event that would match Gance’s ambitious scope and in one fell swoop remove restoration from the discreet chambers of museums and arthouses and push it out in the full public spotlight. For commercial reasons, Image Film Archive trimmed an hour, achieved by projecting the film at a faster speed and, at Brownlow’s suggestion, cutting scenes from the Toulon battle and a subplot concerning the secret passion of an innkeeper’s daughter for Napoleon.
Hiring Radio City Music Hall was an act of unsurpassed faith. The premiere on January 23, 1981, and two other performances cost $150,000, break-even set at ten thousand admissions (at $10-$15 a ticket) and the days when the Music Hall commonly did that were long gone. Bookings were sluggish until an article in the New York Times stimulated interest.
Napoleon at the Radio City Music Hall counted as three days that shook the reissue world. A gross of $297,000 spurred further showings. Image Film archive envisaged a 70mm version to avoid the necessity of projecting across three screens. If New York was a marketing coup, it was just the start. Coppola and Image Film Archive conceived an even bolder strategy. The movie would embark on an old-fashioned roadshow, harking back to the days of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, when print and orchestra traveled from city to city. The touring schedule took in Columbus, Chicago and Los Angeles (in time for Bastille Day). Tickets would cost $10-$20. The 3,890-seat Chicago theater racked up $195,000 for the first four performances, $199,000 for the second four and $173,000 for the third. The 2,750-seat Midland in Kansas City pulled in $150,000, in New Orleans at the 2,800-seat Saenger Performing Arts Center it was $232,000, in Syracuse $93,000 at the Area Landmark.
By July the gross from just forty-five performances was over $2.5 million and for cinemas that could not afford the expense of a live orchestra the score was married to the print. Two more weekends at the Radio City Music Hall in October added $834,000. By year end that had more than doubled, an unbelievable sum for a silent movie revival. The way the film was presented was seen as the reissue catalyst to fight the twin onslaught of video cassettes and cable, since it could not be mounted anywhere but a cinema.
In a move that would have far-reaching implications for the reissue business, Universal’s new classics division was emboldened to buy the worldwide rights from Image. “This will be the kind of event that will be the mainstay for exhibitors over the next five to ten years as we come to grips with home entertainment,” prophesied Ben Commack Jr., the unit’s boss. “If all we get are film buffs, we’ve failed,” he added, “There’s no reason why this film can’t be accessible to mainstream audiences.” A second release wave in 1982-1983, minus the orchestra, targeted smaller first run emporiums in eleven key cities, following a more traditional roadshow pattern of two performances a day and three on Saturdays, an intermission and sales of posters and records in the lobby.
The 70mm six-track stereo version, utilizing the Carmine Coppola score, was tested at the 915-seat Cinerama Dome ($7.50) in Los Angeles. Brochures were distributed to high schools, colleges, hospitals, corporations and museums. The concept almost fell at the first hurdle, first week only $18,400. The second week rose by $100, and fell, but not by much, over the next three weeks. When a final week was announced, takings soared to $19,900. Universal need not have worried. Seattle opened “big” on two small theaters, Philadelphia figures were excellent, Pittsburgh was “wow,” San Francisco “dandy,” Denver “impressive” and Cleveland took in a “sensational” $40,000 opener. Returning to New York, it scored $9,000 at the 549-seat Sutton (at $5 a ticket) arthouse. Although the French premiere of the revival had taken place in Le Havre in 1982, the film did not open commercially until July 1983. Running at five-and-a-quarter hours and with top tickets priced at $20, the three shows at the 3,700-seat Palais de Congress saw twelve thousand admissions.
All in all Napoleon was a triumph, grossing $7.5 million worldwide, certainly the most unexpected reissue of all time, and one that changed attitudes to revivals for the next three decades.
SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues, 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016) p275-279; Kevin Brownlow, Napoleon, Abel Gance’s Classic Film, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983); “Il Duce’s World Try on Napoleon Pic,” Variety, April 3, 1935, 19; “20th Fox Adaptation of Chretien System Stirs Paris Interest in 3D,” Variety, August 19, 1953, 13; “27 Pix from 16 Lands Incl Russia in Venice Festival Race This Week,” Variety, August 19, 1953, 3; “More 3D Systems Flooding Paris,” Variety, September 2, 1953, 10; “The New Always Has a Past,” Variety, November 3, 1954, 20; “Gance Preps Polyvision Prod. like Cinerama,” Variety, August 17, 1955, 14; “Gance Takes His Screen Process on Road Tour,” Variety, November 21, 1956, 14; “Abel Gance, at Age 90, Hit of Telluride; Napoleon on 3 Screens Runs Till 3am,” Variety, September 12, 1979, 28; “Gance’s Napoleon to be Shown at Nuart,” October 23, 1979, 17; “Zoetrope Mulls Symphonic Music for Gance’s Napoleon at Radio City,” Variety, March 19, 1980, 6; “British Slighted on Napoleon,” Variety, November 4, 1980, 1; “1926 Napoleon to Play Music Hall,” Variety, November 5, 1980, 1; Vincent Canby, “Gance’s Silent Napoleon is Reconstituted,” New York Times, January 24, 1981; “1927 Napoleon Makes Strong Showing,” Variety, January 27, 1981, 3; “Napoleon Sellout Prompts Added Screenings,” Variety, January 28, 1981, 2; “Picture Grosses,” Variety, 1981 – Chicago (April 29), Kansas City (May 27); “Napoleon Wow B.O. with 232G, 4 Shows; Syracuse is also Happy,” Variety, July 8, 1981, 5; “Napoleon Grosses $2.6-Mil to Date,” Variety, July 21, 1981, 4; Kevin Brownlow, “Napoleon a Triumph,” New York Times, October 11, 1981; “U’s new deal for Napoleon,” Variety, December 4, 1981, 2; “Big Rental Films of 1981,” Variety, January 13, 1982, 42; “Napoleon Retakes Paris,” Variety, July 27, 1983, 7.
The Magnificent 60s 