best costume design) and was nominated for a third (best cinematography). The film was also novelised by Frederick E. Smith, with the content based on the screenplay. The meager box office results of Waterloo led to the cancellation of Stanley Kubrick's planned film biography of Napoleon. New Zealand film director Peter Jackson, famous for the adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, said that the film inspired his future projects. Awards & nominations Historical inaccuracies While the film portrays the events of the Hundred Days quite faithfully, including some allusions to and scenes from the Battle of Ligny and of Quatre Bras, there were a few departures from historical fact, presumably made for artistic purposes, and some characters act as ciphers for others. In the opening scene, where the marshals are attempting to persuade Napoleon to abdicate, Marshal Soult is present: in reality, in 1814 Soult was commanding the defence of Toulouse against Wellington's Army. The Duchess of Richmond tells Wellington that she does not want her daughter "to wear black before she wears white". The tradition of the bride wearing white did not arise until the 1840s, following Queen Victoria's wedding. At the Duchess of Richmond's ball (which itself was held in a former carriage house rather than the magnificent ballroom depicted), there is an entirely fictional romantic sub-plot with Lord Hay and one of the Duchess' daughters. However her daughter Sarah did recall Lord Hay being present at the ball. Perhaps the biggest inaccuracy in the film is the battleground itself: having had torrential rain the previous night, which delayed the French attack until midday, the battlefield was extremely muddy. In consequence, the British cavalry, in reality, would not have been able to acquire the speed shown in the film before encountering the French columns. However, here, as elsewhere, the film replicates a famous painting of the battle, in this case Elizabeth Thompson's 1881 work Scotland Forever!, which depicts the cavalry galloping towards the enemy. Another inaccuracy is that the Household cavalry do not seem to appear in the movie at all. Further, Ponsonby, commander of the Union Brigade, is believed to have initially been taken prisoner by French cavalry, before being killed during a failed rescue attempt. In the film, he tells the Earl of Uxbridge that Ponsonby's father had been killed in battle by lancers, not least because he had been riding an