Austerlitz (1960)

 

            The recent “Napoleon” included the Battle of Austerlitz as one of its big set pieces.  Ridley Scott covered the battle in just a few minutes which concentrated on the famous artillery bombardment that caused the drowning of many Russian soldiers.  It is possible that a lot of the battle was cut from the theatrical release and the director’s cut will do more justice to Napoleon’s masterpiece.  If justice is to be served, the director’s cut will need a lot more minutes because the battle was complicated and needs an entire movie to itself.  We do have a movie just on the battle.  It was directed and co-written by Abel Gance.  Gance was the renowned director of the silent classic “Napoleon” (1927).  Originally, Gance planned on a six-part series, but only the first episode was made, covering Napoleon’s childhood up to the invasion of Italy.  Decades later, Gance decided to restore his career by filming what would have been part 3.  It became the movie “Austerlitz” (also know as “Battle of Austerlitz).

            The movie opens in 1801.  Napoleon (Pierre Mondy) and Josephine (Martine Carol) are in a marriage where neither is faithful.  He visits a mistress (who has another lover hiding in her bureau).  Josephine is having an affair with her hair dresser.  Napoleon attends a ball which includes Brits Charles Fox and Lord Cornwallis.  The movie has a load of famous figures.  At the ball, Napoleon scolds his sister Pauline (Claudia Cardinale) for being a tramp.  The dances include a silly one where the men carry torches!  Napoleon is appointed Consul for life.  Meanwhile, the Treaty of Amiens is breaking down as the British are interested in round three with the French.  The British are so unnerved by Napoleon that they try to assassinate him.  Napoleon is gathering an army to invade England.  Robert Fulton (Orson Welles!) shows up to entice Napoleon with his steamboat.  In 1804, Napoleon is crowned Emperor.  Oddly, Gance decided not to stage this famous event (unlike Ridley Scott).  In 1805, the Third Coalition is created by the United Kingdom.  It included Austria and Russia. 

            Napoleon preempts an invasion of France by marching his Grand Army to meet the Austro-Russian army.  A map shows his path to the Battle of Ulm.  After this defeat, the allies are unsure of how to counter the French.   The capable Gen. Kutusov commands the allied army and urges caution, but the arrival of Czar Alexander and Austrian Emperor Francis results in his demotion.  They insist on going on the offensive.  Kutusov’s chief of staff Weyrother (Jack Palance!) leads the chorus of the overconfident.  In the other camp, Napoleon’s subordinates think he is nuts to offer battle against the superior enemy forces.  Napoleon knows what he is doing and has preplanned a battle at Austerlitz.  At one point, he recons the area and is almost captured.  Later, he has an encounter with a sassy French soldier named Alboise. 

            In the battle, Kutusov warns about moving off the Pratzen Heights, but the allies descend anyway.  This leads to disaster.  One of Napoleon’s subordinates tells him (and us) what is taking place, but it’s hard to visualize.  Gance did not have the budget (or the CGI) to show key moments in the battle.  He did manage to stage a few shots of cavalry charges.  Alboise leads an infantry charge up the heights, on his own initiative, and it fails.  I guess he didn’t carry a marshal’s baton in his backpack.  A French general on the allied side tricks a French unit into going into a marsh by having a French bugle call replicated.  When the fog dissipates the allies are shocked to find the French are marching to cut their force in half by taking the Pratzen Heights. There’s some cavalry clanging.  Some Russians retreat across a frozen marsh.  Napoleon’s artillery breaks up the ice.  The movie concludes with the usual body-covered battlefield and a band plays “La Marseillaise”.

            “Austerlitz” is not in a league with Gance’s “Napoleon.”  In that earlier film, Gance revolutionized movie making with hand-held cameras, superimposition, and multi-screen panorama.  Little of that is evidenced here.  It just looks like a typical 1960s war movie.  One area where it tops his first movie is in its vibrant technicolor.  Those multi-colored uniforms really splash.  The most obvious comparison is to “Waterloo” and it comes up way short.  The action is small-scale and it spends too much time getting to the battle.  The battle doesn’t kick in until well past the two-hour mark.  In this respect, it goes back further for its background than “Waterloo.”  It includes more historical persons almost to the point of name-dropping.  The scenes leading to the battle are entertaining if you are a fan of the Napoleonic Wars.  In fact, it helps to be a fan because it can be confusing if you are not knowledgeable.  The narrative could have used a good map and a narrator.  If you want to learn about the Battle of Austerlitz, you would be better served with a YouTube video.  Actually, it is good advice to watch one of those videos before viewing the movie.

            The combat is not impressive.  While “Waterloo” was expansive, this film is soundstage-bound.  Much of it takes place the night before the battle when the darkness could better hide the soundstage fakeness.  Periodically, an outdoor shot, usually of cavalry charging is thrown in.  Movies sure love their cavalry charges!  There is some attention to uniforms, but this does not help much in figuring out who is who in the melees.  The cannons do recoil, but the results are just special effects explosions on the ground.  The cinematography is disappointing considering it is a movie directed by Gance.

            The movie is best viewed as a character study.  Mondy is great as Napoleon.  The screenplay has him tugging on soldiers’ ears which was a trait of his.  The movie does a good job making a case for Napoleon being a great leader.  At one point, he dictates six different letters at one time.  He rattles off orders.  He’s a step ahead of the enemy and his own generals.  Napoleon is also portrayed as a man who was willing to accept criticism.  He allows subordinates to complain about his plans with no repercussions.  He does not come off as a thin-skinned megalomaniac.  However, the movie makes a strong case for Napoleon’s masterpiece being more a loss by incompetent fools than a win by a military general.  The main fool is Weyrother who is played with scene-chewing verve by Palance.  It's casting like that which makes the film more watchable.  Weyrother is not the only fool.  On the allied side, only Kutusov comes off well.  It’s a very command-centric movie, with many of Napoleon's marshals having speaking roles.  We do get one common soldier, Alboise, to give a taste of the pawns.  Napoleon meets up with this crusty Old Guard on three occasions.  The first time, Alboise calls Napoleon “Shorty” and is cynical of his leadership which gets so many of his comrades killed.  When Napoleon tries to tug on his ear, he points out that he lost it at Marengo!  Napoleon takes the carping good-naturedly and calls him “grunt.”  He promotes Alboise to sergeant.  The other running comic relief character is Napoleon’s steward.  He has to break in Napoleon’s hats and there is a series of references to Napoleon’s height.  Later, the night before the battle, Napoleon sleeps on a stool rather than wake up his servant who is asleep in his bed.

            In some ways, the movie comes off as a play.  Most of it takes place on a stage, so to speak and it is very much dialogue driven.  That dialogue is well written and compensates a bit for the lack of action.  Since we get more inside Napoleon’s head and see him in a variety of roles, Mondy’s Napoleon captures the man better than Phoenix’s Napoleon.  Phoenix may be the better actor, but Mondy is the better Napoleon.  He is a multi-faceted character.  He can be petulant and bad tempered, but he also shows some humor and really cares about his men.  The family dynamic is clearer with Josephine, Pauline, and his mother getting their due.  Most importantly, this movie is much better at showing why Napoleon was a genius.  He sees the battlefield like he is clairvoyant.  He is able to rattle off orders shifting units without looking at a map.  He predicts his opponents every move and plays them like a fiddle.  In fact, at the end, Kutusov yells “He played us!”

            There have been some good movies set in the Napoleonic Wars.  These include Gance’s
“Napoleon”, Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”, “Waterloo”, and “The Duellists”.  There have been a few good naval films like “Captain Horatio Hornblower”, “Damn the Defiant!”, and the Hornblower TV series.  The Sharpe TV series is excellent as well.  I would not put Scott’s “Napoleon” in with those films, nor would I include “Austerlitz.”   But I would say if you want to watch a movie about the battle, Gance’s movie is more informative and accurate than Scott’s.  And it features a much more entertaining Napoleon.

GRADE  =  B

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  The film is fairly accurate in a simplistic way.  Napoleon and Josephine did cheat on each other and Pauline was a tramp.  Napoleon’s relationship with

Britain was as depicted.  Britain was not interested in a lasting peace.  William Pitt was determined to undermine the Treaty of Amiens to provoke war.  British agents did come close to killing Napoleon with a bomb.  (The movie shows a sniper.)  Robert Fulton did try to sell Napoleon his steamboat.  Its sinking on the Seine nixed any deal.  Napoleon did march his Grande Armee to the Rhine to take the initiative against the Third Coalition.  His army was now organized into corps which were units bigger than divisions that included infantry, artillery, and cavalry.  They were capable of fighting an enemy army until other corps could arrive.  Napoleon would send his corps on different roads for speed and foraging.  When one made contact with the enemy, Napoleon would bring the others to the site or onto the rear or flanks of the enemy.  This allowed him to surround and destroy an Austrian army at the Battle of Ulm.  The way Napoleon allowed his corps to appear to be disunited tempted the allies to take advantage of what looked like a mistake.  The movie assumes the audience knows about the corps.  It is fine in showing the overconfidence in the allied camp.  Weyrother takes a beating in the movie, but he was not the only leader who thought the battle would be easy.  Emperor Francis demoted Kutusov because he wanted to retreat further east to combine with the Prussian army.  Nobody agreed with that degree of caution.  Napoleon recognized this overaggressiveness and fed it.  He did feign interest in an armistice as the movie shows.  His brilliant use of the Pratzen Heights is woefully overlooked in Scott’s film (although hopefully not in the director’s cut).  He gave up the strategic position in what appeared to be a panicky retreat.  He left his right wing weak to invite attack.  The battle opened with an allied attack on the town of Teinitz and later on the town of Sokolnitz (which has a battle scene).  Both towns changed hands several times in serious fighting.  Meanwhile, Davout’s corps was on a forced march to get to the right wing.  The film gives a major shoutout to Gen. Friant whose exhausted cavalry were thrown in against great odds to slow the enemy attack on the right.  The Austrians had taken the abandoned Pratzen Heights and Kutusov wanted to stay put.  However, the Czar insisted he march off it.  Napoleon sent Soult to take the hill.  There were still some allied units on it so the fighting lasted two hours before the French were in control and had thus cut the enemy line in half.  A huge cavalry battle broke out in the center of the battle with the French eventually prevailing.  I assume some of the cavalry footage was intended to depict this part of the battle.  Napoleon sent a force down from the Pratzen Heights to support his embattled right by hitting the Russians from behind.  Some of the fleeing Russians tried to cross some frozen ponds.  French artillery opened fire and some soldiers were drowned (the French saved some of them) and some cannons were lost.  Napoleon exaggerated the disaster by claiming about 2,000 were killed.  In actuality,  it was probably closer to 200, but the legend persists to this day.  The movie does not imply that thousands were killed, but that might just be because of its small-scale rendering of the incident.