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Napoleon Conquers America
During the royalist rising of the 13 Vendémiaire an obscure young officer of the Republic named Buonaparte turned his trained artillery on a Paris mob and cut it to pieces. The greatest mistake a military commander could make facing the "populace," he later explained, was to fire blank ammunition; it inspired only insolence and contempt. From the first round, he said, troops facing a mob should shoot to kill. Ten days later he was made a major general. Scarcely a week after that—his skill and ruthless determination to serve the Republic proven on the 13 Vendémiaire—he was given command of France's Army of the Interior.
One may doubt that a Bonaparte at Kent State in 1970 would have been so lionized or rewarded. But now Bonaparte has stormed and conquered New York's Radio City Music Hall, as well as the American press in its entirety. At least the 1927 silent film epic Napoleon by France's Abel Gance has done so. And what makes the event so bizarre is that the celebrity-studded crowds that roared, cheered, and gave the film delirious standing ovations were apparently made up of the sort of people who felt the killing of four students at Kent State would live in the annals of American villainy.
Were the crowds cheering, not Bonaparte, but the art of Abel Gance? To a degree, perhaps—particularly misled as they were by balderdash in the press about this being a "lost" masterpiece. (Gance's Napoleon was about as lost as D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.) But would feverish throngs like this have turned out for a fuller version of Flaherty's Nanook of the North, or the original five-hour version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed, or even Eisenstein's (genuinely) lost and rediscovered first film Strike? A spokesman for Radio City Music Hall gave the game away with an incredulous, "Film buffs? You think there are fifty thousand film buffs in New York?" At a ticket price scaled to $25? There can be no question: these crowds were cheering to a large extent for Napoleon himself—at least for the Napoleon presented to them in Gance's film.
And Gance's Napoleon is not just any old figure in the heroic mold. He is no Sitting Bull, no John Henry, no Ivan the Terrible, no Lenin. Gance gives us Napoleon as Hero of Western Civilization, pure, almost sacramentalized, his eyes dreamy with the vision of his destiny, of his mission to bring France's gift of liberty to the world (if necessary by cannon and saber). The film is a work of fervid patriotism, even gutter patriotism. And it opened at Radio City Music Hall during the frenzied weekend when the American hostages from Teheran arrived back in New York. I am normally extremely cautious about attempting to read the minds of people sitting with me in a darkened theater, but the 6,000 at the Music Hall were in such a state of vociferous exaltation that one had only to listen to what they cheered for. Patriotism, it would seem on the face of it, is back in style. And not only patriotism but liberty—old-fashioned liberty—and perhaps even the notion that liberty is worth fighting for, as in that quaint archaism, "Give me liberty or give me death." At least the question is posed, all by an ecstatic public response to what is in many ways a very trashy movie.
The critical reception for this fifty-four-year-old silent film has been as astonishing as the audience response. Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote: "One realizes that there once was a film that justified all of the adjectives that have subsequently been debased. Napoleon sweeps, it takes the breath away, it dazzles." He concluded—in January—that it seemed certain to be the film event of the year. Jack Kroll of Newsweek went him one better, calling it the most thrilling film in many years, "an explosion of creativity by a man on fire." Another leading critic wrote: "For once the word 'masterpiece' seems too puny"; another, "The major movie experience of my lifetime."
The rapture was virtually universal. Originally scheduled for only two performances, the film was extended for three more the weekend following, and then the weekend after that, in response to what a critic called "a ticket demand unparalleled in modern cinema." Aided by the high ticket price, the film broke the Music Hall's box-office records for a single showing, for a day, and even for a week—on the basis of three showings—and tickets were scalped on the street for $40. NBC devoted a segment of its network Nightly News to the phenomenon. Although it played in only a single house in the whole country, and for only three performances, trade publications ranked the movie eleventh for the week nationwide. Special showings of Napoleon are now being considered for the Hollywood Bowl, for the restored 4,000-seat Fox in Atlanta, and for Japan, after which it will go on general release throughout the U.S. with its musical score recorded on a soundtrack. It was as if someone had lit a match, and a gasoline-filled room had burst into flames.
The man who lit the match, of course, was Francis Coppola—that twelfth-hour convert to the anti-Vietnam war movement. I have already expressed in these pages my doubts of Coppola's bona fides as a pacifist or anti-bellicist of any sort, and shall merely add that his new avocation as patron of neglected or "forgotten" film masterpieces appears to support my view. Of all the neglected masterpieces, the three he has discovered so far have been Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Our Hitler, Gance's Napoleon, and, soon to be presented, Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will— which is to say, two films about Hitler and one about Napoleon. The list would seem to speak for itself.
But Coppola has great talents as a showman, the heart of a Mike Todd, a plunger. Already on the verge of bankruptcy again, the profits from his commercially successful Apocalypse Now gaspingly over-committed, he knew Napoleon would have to be an "event" or nothing. He invested a quarter of a million dollars in the project, which included a scholarly reconstitution of something close to the original film and a stirring eclectic score composed by his father, Carmine Coppola, performed on stage by the sixty-piece American Symphony Orchestra. The predestined locale, with an overhead cost per performance of $60,000, was the Radio City Music Hall. ("Right where Napoleon belongs," said a friend of mine with a sense of the appropriate. "Right in there with those Rockettes.")
There is no question but what Gance's Napoleon deserves a place in film history. Its technical innovations alone earn it that. In 1927, when the film was released, the Germans had already put the camera on wheels, inventing the so-called "tracking shot," and Russia's Sergei Eisenstein, in his Battleship potemkin, in addition to setting up colossal scenes and composing screen images of unprecedented power, had carried the art of "montage"—in his view the heart of the cinema, the control of stress and timing without which all else is nothing—to a level of achievement perhaps still to be surpassed.
Most of Gance's innovations were in the realm of camera movement. He suspended his camera from overhead wires like a miniature cable car. He strapped it to the back of a galloping horse. In what was perhaps the most sensational shot of his career, he fastened his camera to a gigantic swing which sweeps through the air above the revolutionary Convention, conveying the wild, heady turbulence of the Revolution, and at the same time suggesting the mighty waves of a tempest at sea, for crossing the Mediterranean in a storm-tossed ship from Corsica is the young Napoleon—France's Man of Destiny.
To my knowledge, Gance was also the first to use the hand-held camera. I once saw at the Paris Cinémathèque a shot not in the present version in which this same tempestuous Convention is also shown from the point of view of the orator, the legendary Danton. The image of the assembly hall teeming with delegates is seen to rise and fall, no longer with the circular swell of the ocean's waves but with the anthropomorphic heaving of a man's chest. From the floor of the Convention we have already seen the great Danton holding forth in impassioned speech. Now we see this same Convention from the heaving chest of the man who for a time held the Revolution in sway. Abel Gance, in short, invented the subjective camera.
The technical novelty for which he is most famous, however, is what he called "Polyvision," a kind of proto-Cinerama. For four sequences of the film—only one of which has been preserved—Gance goes to three cameras, expanding the pageant-like spectacle of Napoleon's army on the march to the lateral limits of visual perception. Gance was very attached to his Polyvision, and wretchedly cast down when it failed to catch on. One thing that sets it apart from Cinerama is that Polyvision, although sometimes using its three screens simply to widen a single image as in the familiar Cinerama technique, often splits into three separate pictures—two angles of the army on the march on side screens, in one case, while on the central screen flaps the imperial eagle, symbol of Napoleon's destiny. Gance was at great pains to explain that in Polyvision some of the images merely tell the film's story, they are its "prose," while the other images, laden with symbols and memory projections, are its "poetry" and Polyvision's true glory. A flapping cardboard eagle as symbol of Napoleon's destiny might not seem a very high form of poetry, but it is typical enough of Abel Gance.
The drive behind these technical innovations can only be understood if it is remembered—as it rarely is—that in its early days the cinema had a raging inferiority complex with respect to the legitimate theater. The cinema had no intellectual prestige. Actors who worked for it were often looked down on. (There are people still alive today who remember signs on the old Hollywood boarding houses, "No Dogs or Actors.")
In recent decades, with the theater very much on the defensive with respect to the cinema, stage actors have been known to come gamboling down the aisle to argue with members of the audience or sit on their laps—all in a desperate attempt to "do things the movies can't." But in the 20's, when the shoe was definitely on the other foot, it was the film-makers who desperately wanted to do things the stage could not. And they did so with a vengence. Eyes mesmerized by the field of vision of the magical moving camera, film audiences sailed through storms at sea, flew through the air. Griffith had already measured the dramatic impact of the closeup, but it was now put to more intensive use. The camera could see small. It could see big. Audiences could see crowds storm the real Winter Palace in Petrograd (Eisenstein's October), could cross the real Alps with Hannibal.
I disagree with Kevin Brownlow, the British film historian who has made something of a life work of reconstituting the original Napoleon, when he says that the advent of the talking picture "consigned the innovations of Napoleon to the scrap heap." True, most film historians consider the early "talkies" an artistic step backward. Exploration of the full visual possibilities of the medium was temporarily abandoned, spoken dialogue allowing film-makers to ape what they considered their artistic and social betters of the stage, turning the movies into a kind of filmed theater, stage entertainment for the multitudes—a development anathematized by Eisenstein, to name only one. But before long the pressure to expand the medium was on again: The Blue Angel, Le Jour sc Lève, Citizen Kane.
Needless to say, when the cinema was once more on the defensive—this time with respect not to a "higher" art medium but to a lower, television—every single one of Gance's techniques without exception was brought out again, some of them to become, if they had not already, part of the permanent vocabulary of film language. To this day every director who aligns his camera with the barrel and sights of an assassin's rifle, or sets it on the handlebars of a roaring motorcycle, or on the skids of a helicopter to glide and swoop over city or mountain, has as his spiritual ancestor Abel Gance. I myself do not believe that the actors who broke out of the proscenium arch to sit in the laps of the audience raised the theater to any new heights. But the film-makers who worked feverishly finding new techniques to enrich their means of expression developed a medium of vast range and flexibility and emotional power and, in my view, created a major new art. So, yes, anyone with a true scholar's interest in the development of cinema technique should see Abel Gance's Napoleon. Unfortunately, he will also have to put up with a lot of junk.
Napoleon was made for a 1927 Frenchman with about a fourth-grade education. It is interlarded with tatty little fictions, and the central character himself is fictionalized, at many key points—always in the direction of hagiography. As history the film lies somewhere between Parson Weems's George Washington with his cherry tree ("I cannot tell a lie") and D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, in which the cause of the Civil War is shown to be Abraham Lincoln's having a mulatto mistress.
If anything, Napoleon is closer to Griffith than to Weems. The 13 Vendémiaire, for example, is not plainly represented as a royalist rising, which it was, with Frenchman killing Frenchman, but as an "invasion"—presumably by foreigners of some sort. Whether or not Gance ever shot Bonaparte's actual encounter with the "invaders" I do not know, and in any case it is conveniently absent from the present version. Napoleon no sooner sets off to repel the "invasion" than he immediately returns and is hailed as having "saved France," whereas what he has saved is obviously the Republic (saved it, that is, until at a later moment, not shown in the film, he sees fit to destroy it).
The movie is also loaded with shabby 1920's mannerisms, such as Napoleon's cutesy-pie flirtation with Josephine (Napoleon's ways with women are now widely known, and they were direct to the point of abruptness). At the Music Hall, the most glaring 20's coynesses and anachronisms were received by the audience with delighted laughter in a mood of High Camp, which no doubt made the movie's servile hero-worship of Napoleon somewhat easier to take.
But what amuses American audiences embarrasses the French, and a variety of reasons, including its historical illiteracy, has always prevented the film's successful re-release in its own country. A modern French audience would take Gance's Napoleon about as well as a modern American audience would take Griffith's Abraham Lincoln. The very title Napoleon is a misnomer, the central character being known during the entire period covered by the film as Bonaparte—or, actually, Buonaparte, as he only Gallicized the spelling of his name when he took command of France's Army of Italy, an event which occurs at the movie's very end. Culturally speaking, Napoleon, of course, was not French but Italian. He only learned French at the age of ten and even then spoke it with an Italian accent. His father had fought the French as a Corsican nationalist. He is, in fact, one of a long stream of nationalist leaders, stretching from Alexander of Macedon to Hitler of Austria and Stalin of Georgia, who came from the cultural periphery of the nations they were to lead with such fierce purpose. The viewer will glean nothing of this from the picture. For Gance, Napoleon was pure French. We are dealing here not with history but with a kind of vulgar mythology.
Those with the complacent assumption that historians have reached a consensus on most of the great leaders and events of the past should be apprised that Napoleon remains a highly controversial figure, in France as well as anywhere else. He first saved, then destroyed, the Republic. Where his armies marched, serfdom and slavery were abolished (and Jews enfranchised), the Rights of Man prevailed, all men were declared equal before the law. But he laid waste most of Europe, left hundreds of thousands dead on battlefields. He proclaimed on several occasions that his authoritarian rule was only temporary, but he was not universally believed. His messianic zeal disrupted world peace; the universality of his creed left the concept of the balance of power in shards. Charles de Gaulle, of all people, did not especially admire him, writing that he had no "sense of measure."
Napoleon's glory as a military commander—for a sometime pacifist like Bertrand Russell, his most sinister feature—was also his most unassailable. All his contemporaries were in awe of him. Wellington felt that Bonaparte's presence among his troops was worth another forty thousand men. French defectors who advised the coalitions that repeatedly rose against him warned: "Never fight the French when Napoleon commands. You will be beaten. Fight his lieutenants. Only when you have the Emperor overwhelmingly outnumbered can you defeat him in the field." The advice was prescient. Dead, Napoleon fired men's minds for over a century.
French schoolbooks to this day give the Emperor "mixed notices," so to speak. Nowhere on the map of Paris can be found the name "Napoleon" (although there is a modest-sized Rue Bonaparte honoring the General of the Republic). On the other hand, the same map is strewn with the names of Napoleon's marshals (unless they betrayed him) and his victories. When the Arch of Triumph was constructed at the Etoile, Frenchmen of all political persuasions fought for sixty years under five regimes (including two republics and two monarchies) to have their ancestors' names inscribed on the monument—a privilege reserved to officers with the rank of general and above in Napoleon's armies. As ardent a republican as Victor Hugo died bitter that he had not succeeded in getting his own father's name so inscribed. No French politician in his right mind would openly attack the shade of Napoleon. So on the street level, as it were, Abel Gance was certainly on the safe side in taking the pro-Napoleon side in the controversy. The only trouble is that he is the kind of hagiographer who destroys all evidence unfavorable to his saint.
But Napoleon is not the only subject about which French schoolbooks display ambivalence. The Revolution itself is a delicate episode. All French republican regimes owe their claim of legitimacy to the principles of the Revolution, and Bastille Day is still the French national holiday. But the Revolution led to the Terror, which Frenchmen are brought up to loathe and dread. Gance's Napoleon is almost as much about the Revolution as it is about Bonaparte, and on that critical subject he wobbles incoherently from effect to effect, always fatuous, always puerile. On balance one would have to say that Gance is no true friend of democracy—a conclusion hardly surprising in view of the slavishness of his worship of the leader. He has, moreover, the dim-witted tendency to view the Revolution mainly as an auspicious prologue to Napoleon, his hero.
The opening scene of the present four-hour film shows Napoleon as a youth at a military school in France. The youngsters engage in a snowball fight. Napoleon, of course, wins. Such democratic spirit as this movie has is demonstrated by Napoleon, wherever he goes, having as his "best friend" a member of the common people. At military school it is a (fictional) scullion.
The scene now shifts to Paris in the revolutionary days. We meet what Gance calls, in a title, the Revolution's "three gods." Marat is played as a spastic psychopath, Danton as a blustering bully, Robespierre as an icy despot. They are an unattractive bunch. A young officer of France's Army of the Rhine, Rouget de Lisle, comes to the revolutionary Convention with a song he has just written, La Marseillaise (actually not given this name until a much later stage of the Revolution). Rather implausibly, Danton teaches the Convention to sing it. Another young officer, an almost hieratic Napoleon Bonaparte (now played by the adult Albert Dieudonné an actor of some presence—at least he's not ridiculous), congratulates the composer. At this point Louis XVI has not yet been guillotined and a title tells us, "As the monarchy crumbled Napoleon felt a source of light growing within him."
Next comes a visit by Napoleon to his native island which turns the histories of France, Corsica, and the Bonaparte family all on their heads. Napoleon communes with his "best friend the shepherd Santo Ricci" when he's not "discussing the future with his friend the ocean." The sequence is best remembered for a cavalry chase after Napoleon reveals himself as a French patriot ("Our Fatherland is France! With me!"), and for his escape by boat when he hoists the French Tricolor in place of a missing sail. It is at this point that we have the audacious cross-cutting between the storm at sea and the storm at the Convention in Paris, while a title tells us, "Napoleon was being carried to the height of history."
Part I of the movie closes with Bonaparte attacking in a driving rain at the siege of Toulon, where he won his spurs (in fact, catching the eye of Barras, future leader of the Directory, who became his protector). Although all the hoopla about this film is based, theoretically, on having at last reconstituted something close to its original version, Messrs. Brownlow and Coppola have another thirty-minute sequence which belongs somewhere near the end of Part I but which they did not show as it would have made the movie too long. The sequence tells the love story of Napoleon and a (fictional) serving girl, played by Annabella, who, it might be worth noting, went on to a higher station in life in Hollywood, where she married Tyrone Power.
Part II of Napoleon contains a great deal of pop-history of the Revolution, bent, naturally, to Gance's purposes. It opens with one of the most celebrated assassinations in history, that of Marat in his bathtub by the young royalist Charlotte Corday (played by the beautiful Mrs. Gance). The Terror still rages. The tumbrels roll. The tyrant Robespierre offers Bonaparte a military command, but he refuses and is jailed. (The actual Bonaparte was jailed not for having defied Robespierre but—when Robespierre fell—for having been subservient to him.)
But the 9 Thermidor approaches. Robespierre is shouted down by the Convention. Saint-Just, his handsome young disciple, described as having "the beauty of chiseled marble," rises to speak. It is one of the most embarrassing things in this entire movie that Abel Gance, never a good-looking man, chose to play Saint-Just himself. Moreover, having given himself a starring role and powdered himself up to look as pretty as possible, he could not resist the narcissistic temptation to make Saint-Just—a cold, bloodthirsty fanatic if ever there was one—a much more appealing character than he was historically.
Suddenly the tempo changes. A "beautiful," languid Saint-Just gestures gracefully, speaks with divine eloquence. In the gallery, a lovely woman cries rapturously, "They are too good for us!" Thrown for a loop by this incomprehensible about-face, the author of the official plot synopsis in the program writes, "With fiery oratory, Saint-Just brings the Assembly 'round to his side"—whereas, on the 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just (1) did not speak with fiery oratory; (2) did not speak at all; and (3) certainly did not bring the Assembly around to his side. The next day, at seven o'clock in the afternoon, he was guillotined with Robespierre. The Terror was over. For those interested in the cast, the handsomest actor of the lot in real life was the great if somewhat mad poet Antonin Artaud, but Gance had him play the twitching, nearly demented Marat.
Our pop-history billows along. We are now under the Directory. When Barras offers Bonaparte his command on the 13 Vendémiaire (misrepresented, to repeat, as a foreign invasion), Napoleon says, "I do not like those whom I serve" (a strange remark for a man to make to his protector), "but when the homeland is invaded, the government must be defended." Also, "I shall not sheathe my sword until order is restored." Instantly he is (title) "THE MAN WHO SAVED FRANCE." "From this morning on," he declares, "I am the Revolution!"
One of the movie's big scenes, with wild dancing, gay abandon, is the Bal des Victimes, one of many balls held by those who narrowly escaped the guillotine. A suddenly puritanical Bonaparte lectures a giddy, suspiciously flapper-like merveilleuse, "With imbeciles and layabouts like you France is heading for the abyss!" (Actually she is the kind of girl the real Napoleon rather liked.) But Bonaparte soon meets Josephine (a distinguished layabout herself and one of the period's great power groupies), marries her, and secures the command of France's Army of Italy.
It was in his first Italian campaign that Bonaparte won the startling string of victories that swiftly spread his fame throughout Europe and, above all, made him the idol of the French army. When he next returned to Paris, with the army at his back, the Republic survived for exactly three weeks. The final sequence of the movie, already referred to, is the ambitious eighteen-minute triptych with its marching men, cannons, imperial eagle, visions of childhood, the Revolution, Josephine, the shadow of the eagle as the army advances joyously, Napoleon's head with a halo effect strongly suggesting divine guidance.
The ideology Gance attributed to this conquering army and this conqueror is pretty clearly spelled out in the film's penultimate sequence, when Bonaparte, before leaving to take up his command in Italy, visits the empty hall of the Convention at night to commune with the ghosts of the Revolution's leaders: Danton, Robespierre, Marat, and Saint-Just. The inclusion of Saint-Just in this group (still played by Gance) is a further example of the director's vanity. Given the antipathy toward these men expressed by Gance in earlier scenes of the film (except for Saint-Just played by himself, of course), one is surprised at the dignity of their bearing now. The antipathy, moreover, is not without historical justification. Danton had a far more engaging personality than the others, but there is general agreement that Robespierre, Marat, and Saint-Just were doctrinaire fanatics of an especially pitiless kind. Their speeches were filled with appeals to purify the nation with seas of blood. "To insure public tranquility 200,000 heads must roll!" cried Marat. "The vessel of the Revolution can arrive in port only on an ocean reddened with torrents of blood!" proclaimed Saint-Just. The Revolution had its moderate wing, but its extremists, architects of the Terror, remain the most famous—so Gance, having shown marked distaste for them earlier, in a dazzling display of incoherence now exalts them as keepers of the sacred flame of the Revolution.
Their exchange with Bonaparte is interesting. "The Revolution needs a strong authority," they say solemnly. "Will you be it?" Napoleon answers (title in upper case): "YES." "If the Revolution remains within France, it will perish," they affirm. "Will you carry it beyond her frontiers?" Again Napoleon replies: "YES." He then makes a speech declaring his intention to liberate all the oppressed and eradicate all frontiers ("Every man will have a common Fatherland"), ending with the revelation of his ultimate goal, the "Universal Republic." Since other states could hardly be expected to acquiesce peacefully in the abolition of their sovereignty, this amounted to a program of world conquest.
Gance no doubt expected the French public to find this a rather winning trait on Napoleon's part (and heaven knows what the audiences at Radio City Music Hall thought of it). But suddenly, amid the wallowing in hero worship and bad history, an odd note of truth has been struck. "No frontiers." World dominion. Simply that. This was exactly the perception of Napoleon's intentions formed by his enemies, which was why coalition after coalition rose against him on the Continent, until at last they brought him down.
After this enormous two-part movie, Gance had planned to make five more films of comparable length covering Napoleon's career all the way to St. Helena. I cannot believe his failure to do so was a great loss to the cinema.
After Napoleon, Gance's career was pitiable. In 1936 he made Beethoven's Great Love. His stock in trade, such as it was, was mining history, and pseudo-history, for heroic figures. In the 50's he made the appalling La Tour de Nesles, about France's notorious 16th-century Queen Margot, and in 1963 the equally appalling Cyrano and d'Artagnan, about the joint adventures of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Alexandre Dumas's d'Artagnan of The Three Musketeers, an attempt to exploit the work of more successful fictionalizers than himself. These last were dismal failures in France, but Cyrano and d'Artagnan was received with great respect at the New York Film Festival.
To my knowledge, Gance's only substantial success in the last fifty years has been his Austerlitz, in about 1960, which returned again to his beloved Napoleon. A completely nondescript work, bearing no trace of even the young director's audacity, the film is a succession of historical scenes loosely organized around one of the Emperor's most brilliant victories, which destroyed the Third Coalition. Now over ninety, Gance is dreaming of still another epic movie, this time: Christopher Columbus.
But despite the feebleness of his later works, it is a plain falsehood to claim that Gance and his Napoleon were forgotten. They are in all the film history books, and usually with very high marks. Napoleon, if in a truncated yersion, has played regularly all these years at the Paris Cinémathèque. Gance has been an honored member of the French delegation to more international film gatherings than I would care to count. In 1967 the New York Festival presented a version of Napoleon that ran a full four hours, though it lacked some footage included in the present version. A great highlight of the 1971 New York Film Festival was a new sound version of Napoleon put together by Gance himself, with some footage freshly shot. Honored in New York, this version, called in French Bonaparte and the Revolution (a more accurate title), was a fiasco in France. Napoleon, in any event, far from being forgotten, is one of the best remembered "masterpieces" in film history. I would probably not be writing about it, in sum, if it were not for the frenzied reception it is being given.
Why, then, were the crowds at the Music Hall cheering so wildly? I, again, refuse to entertain seriously the notion that they were cheering for a silent film masterpiece. A revival of Jean Vigo's Zéro de Conduite, with an unknown score by Virgil Thomson, performed on the stage by a sixty-piece orchestra, would have received warm, Lincoln Center-type applause, but nothing like this. These people were cheering for Napoleon.
Their cheering, on the other hand, was quirky. When Bonaparte, at one point in the film, orders no smoking in the building, there was a gleeful roar of approval. In the movie the danger is from gunpowder being moved, whereas the audience was thinking of the Surgeon General's warning. Another roar of anachronistic applause, this one thunderous, wall to wall, came when Bonaparte orders all private citizens to turn in their firearms. Napoleon is concerned for the security of the state, keeping weapons out of the hands of potential insurgents, while the audience was protesting against Saturday-night specials used by such anti-social elements as the man who had just killed John Lennon.
Say what you will, there is something a little odd about an audience afraid of delinquents on Central Park West and secondhand cigarette smoke cheering so madly for one of the boldest and most devastating war chiefs of history, a man not afraid of gunsmoke or any other kind of smoke and so little in fear of death by firearms that the Imperial Guard once refused to attack until the Emperor had retired from the front line.
There was, of course, the mood of High Camp that pervaded the evening, the audience giggling and laughing delightedly not only at Gance's fictional inanities but at a number of Bonaparte's authentic remarks. When, during an attack, one of his lieutenants reports to him that an assigned military task is impossible, Napoleon cries, "'Impossible' is not French!" The audience shrieked with laughter. But Napoleon meant it. It was once said in his presence that one of his generals, Kléber, was not French but a German-speaking Alsatian. Napoleon dismissed the remark with a sardonic, "Il sabre en français" ("He sabers in French"). When the accolade was repeated to Kléber, who knew the smell of gunpowder and the price paid on the battlefield for all these liberations and these French ideals, he did not giggle, but was filled with pride. Such is the power of a patriotic creed at its apogee.
The night I saw Napoleon at the Radio City Music Hall, many members of the audience were already seeing it for a second or third time, their cheers and gales of laughter synchronized responsively in a manner suggesting nothing so much as an audience of teenagers at a Saturday midnight viewing of The Rocky Horror Show.
But through this screen of camp, just what are we witnessing? It is a point on which reasonable men may differ. Some will say it is a revival of true patriotism, for which view a solid case can be built: Teheran, Afghanistan, the freeing of the hostages, the Reagan victory, the "born-again hawk" stances of even the Carter administration, the indubitable new groundswell of nationalism that has swept the country. I myself tend to a more skeptical view—at least for the specific audience I saw in action.
I believe there is such a thing as a pornography of patriotism—people whose channels of true patriotism are blocked must express this emotion in other ways, often in a debased form. It is not unrelated to what George Orwell called "transposed nationalism." Now Abel Gance's Napoleon is probably the most rabidly patriotic movie in film history. It is French! French! French! France's mission! France's destiny! Everthing good is French. I propose a simple rule. Could the members of the audience at the Music Hall use the word "American," without embarrassment, and with anything like the exorbitant passion given the word "French" in this film? Do they feel their own nation has freedoms and other values that are worth defending, let alone spreading throughout the world, even by force of arms? Do they have the smallest, tiniest part of Napoleon Bonaparte's relentless, seething will to prevail? Do they have it now? Is it growing within them? The future will tell.


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This instructable explains the 'basics' of making yourself a home-made crossbow. Feel free to experiment and comment!
Step 1: Materials
Step 2: Cut the wood
Step 3: Make the bow and string
Then onto the Bow. You need your popsicle sticks, wood glue and tape. Take your first popsicle stick and glue them together overlapping. Then let everything dry. Then you need to just start adding on popsicle sticks with tape at the weekest points and where it may bend more to stiffen it.
Step 4: Make your cocking and aiming devices
For the aiming device you have the clothespin and rubber bands. Put the clothespin on the back of the piece if wood. Then simply put all your rubber bands around the head or jaws to increase pressure on the jaws.

subset: commoncrawl


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Phone +48 913 595595
53.432245 14.556246


text: Ontario passes teacher anti-strike bill Add to ... CP Video Published Wednesday, Sep. 12, 2012 12:30AM EDT Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 12, 2012 12:49AM EDT A bill passed in the Ontario legislature Tuesday will rein in the wages and benefits of teachers, and gives the government power to stop strikes. Unions representing the workers say the legislation is undemocratic. Watch More Video: Harper promises permanent home renovation tax credit Canadian economy contracting: a recession in sight? Camping in Ontario? Here's what you need to know about rattlesnakes Foreign workers claim mistreatment at Japanese Subaru suppliers Why women need to save more than men Yellen says U.S. economy on track California governor says Harper needs to 'get on board' with climate action One mother's strategy to get 'free money' for her daughter's education Report calls culture at Dalhousie dentistry school 'paternalistic' Breaking the cycle: Inside a high school for indigenous students Pennsylvania college teaching students to restore classic cars Hab forward Alex Galchenyuk fires his agent Uber driver deemed 'employee, not contractor' Why Niger needs Europe's migrants Why more Canadian parents are home-schooling their kids Michelle Obama promotes girls' education as the 'ultimate key' to success Work replaces school for millions of poverty-stricken children in India 170,000 TDSB students won't be getting report cards this year Why are Canadian kids failing so badly at physical activity? André Picard's advice to Canada's future doctors from his 30 years of health reporting Comments AA More Related to this Story Video: Ontario teachers rally against wage-freeze bill Video: Chicago teachers strike rolls into second day Video: How teachers prep for the new school year


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While there isn't any official World of Warcraft holiday for St. Patty's Day, festivities are bound to be popping up everywhere. Perhaps some merry drinking, maybe a few kisses to a stone, or maybe everyone rolls a red headed female dwarven warrior and dances around a bit.
Besides my real life green beer that I'll be enjoying (most likely a Budweiser Select with green dye), I'll have to saunter over to a tavern and pick up some sort of Potent Ale. I think I'll drink it right before I go off to pull Archimonde, no doubt causing everyone to yell in bewilderment over vent.
What are you doing in game for this St. Patrick's Day? And if you can, share with me and tip back the ol' glass at 9:00 EST tonight!


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If you're able to consume under 2,000 calories a day and ensure that you stay active, there are some nutritional supplements available that could really help you to achieve your optimum weight. The best weight loss pills contain natural substances which may be effective in either suppressing appetite or supporting the natural fat-burning process, and our favourite supplements contain a combination of the two.


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When leaving Charleston on I-26 North, I always look forward to the drive between Summerville and I-95. There the more developed urban environment to the south is left behind, and the road quickly enters lovely, forested Southern countryside.
I recently learned, however, that the state DOT has decided to cut down and remove the thousands of trees that grace the wide median strip in this 30-mile-long stretch.
Once the lush, green woodland is clear-cut, a (predictably ugly) cable-type guardrail will be erected along the center line of the denuded land.
The DOT claims that its planned wholesale destruction of hundreds of acres of mature forest is justified in the interest of safety.
The agency also admits, however, that the majority of crashes in this area are caused not by the highway's proximity to the woodland but by drivers who are distracted (i.e. texting or using cellphones), sleeping, speeding or driving too fast for conditions.
Moreover, the DOT would like to remove the trees now so that they won't be an issue when it seeks to widen the interstate in the near future.
And while eliminating the median's trees may enhance safety in some crash circumstances, on balance, clear-cutting may actually make the roadway less safe.
Without the forest screen, nighttime drivers will be distracted by the headlights of cars traveling in the opposite direction, and won't always be able to use high beams. Nor will drivers be sheltered as they are now from dangerous cross-winds.
Shouldn't we, the people who live here and use this scenic roadway regularly, at least have a chance to voice our opinions at a public hearing regarding the DOT's plan?
Isn't it possible that the creative ideas discussed at a hearing could lead to a better plan, one that would enhance safety without unduly sacrificing this area's natural beauty?
Couldn't the taxpayers' $5 million be better spent on stepped-up enforcement of traffic safety laws instead of transforming a pristine green corridor into a barren "DMZ"?
Please contact your state representative if you feel as I do that the DOT's current, misguided plan for I-26 should be reconsidered.
Dave Engle
Terns Nest Road
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PIMCO's sterling portfolio head Mike Amey believes the 30-year bull market in UK gilts is dead and has shifted his focus towards emerging market currencies.
Amey said gilt yields have been kept artificially stable on the back of the BoE and commercial banks being "forced buyers", with banks owning 30% of the market.
The manager, who heads up the PIMCO Select UK fund, added in an environment of rising inflation, coinciding with record low interest rates, gilts are depressed and will produce a zero real return.
"The BoE and the government have seemed to accept that growth is going to be low, and this is why they are keeping interest rates at 0.5%. They are tolerating the high levels of inflation as the price they have to pay for the low growth environment," said Amey.
"With the BoE likely to keep real short rates negative, the 30-year government bond rally is over as this does not offer investors inflation protection.
"The only reason GILT yields have remained stable is because the banks were forced buyers after the credit crunch, with the BoE purchasing £200bn and the commercial banks £95bn."
Amey said he is tapping into safe spreads away from government bonds and has been boosting exposure to EM currencies.
"I believe EM currency exposure offers a better secular opportunity to generate inflation protection over gilts."
He recently introduced a Brazilian local currency bond into the portfolio, which is currently yielding 12.3%. He is also bullish on the growth prospects for out-of-favour asset-backed securities.
"Asset-backed securities are attractively valued. I have a position in Tesco and Merryhill Shopping Centre."
Categories: Europe
Topics: Senate 2011Pimco
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Photo by Glen Randall, Div HQ Co,
Stenographer to Maj. Gen. Cowles, 1968-69
Photo Index
21st Replacement Center - 1968
Gutleut Kaserne - Downtown Frankfurt
- where many of our fates were determined -
A view from a window at the 21st Replacement Bn facility at Gutleut Kaserne near the Frankfurt railway station, with a view of the main Gutleut building (background) across the parking lot. During the 1960's and 1970's virtually all newly assigned troops to the 3AD came through this location, which was a USAEUR unit that processed most troop arrivals coming through Rhein Main Air Base. In 1976 the 21st was moved to the IG Farben Complex (Abrams Complex), then in 1980 to its new permanent location at the Air Base itself.
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Washington, D.C., is the perfect backdrop for a commedia dellarte production, which requires the actors to wear masks, keep their identity fluid and wreak havoc.
Commedia dellarte translates to the comedy of craft or comedy of skills. It is a highly theatrical school of theater performed by those who are slaves to the craft of comedy and wield improvisational skills like weapons. This genre will not be kind to the amateur actor. It demands that every performer parry and volley with his co-stars and audience under many different circumstances. This type of comedy tends toward the satirical, bawdy, insane, convoluted and whimsically fun.
The current production of Carlo Goldonis The Servant of Two Masters up now at the Shakespeare Theatre Company and extended through July 8 is perfectly, cleverly, wonderfully insane.
The show opens in Italian, in a play within a play. A trunk is opened and suddenly little lights Fireflies? Perhaps. Magic? Definitely. fly and float across the stage. The audience is transported to the world of the play.
The plot of this show is honestly kind of beside the point, but it swirls around Truffaldino (Steven Epp), the trickster servant who is hungry from the beginning of the play to the conclusion.
Truffaldinos genius scheme to get fed twice is to serve two masters, thereby eventually getting to eat double the vittles.
Pretty quickly, however, the audience knows what Truffaldino doesnt: No one can serve two masters and certainly no one can serve them well.
The only thing that doubles for Truffaldino is trouble.
In his attempts to try to serve the two masters, the clownish servant screws up everything. When he tries to meet the demands of one master, Beatrice (Rachel Spencer Hewitt), while balancing at times literally the demands of the other, Florindo (Jesse J. Perez), nothing goes right and, eventually, his scheme is unveiled.
Along the way, however, Truffaldino unwittingly helps love happen, hearts break, hearts mend. He makes confusion the center of this world. He also juggles, while badly serving dinners.
Truffaldinos self-inflicted Catch-22 is a rather delightful, comic parallel to American political theater. After all, the consistent question for lawmakers and their political parties is how to reconcile the never-ending quest to be elected to public office while attempting to govern effectively and responsibly.
The shenanigans that ensue on the political stage are, at times, no less absurd then those that will take place on the Shakespeare Theatre Companys stage over the next month. Though, it should be acknowledged, the consequences are often more dire.
This production of The Servant of Two Masters, adapted by Constance Congdon and directed by Christopher Bayes, had its first sold-out run at the Yale Repertory Theatre during the 2009-2010 season, before traveling across the country to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
For each community, Bayes and his cast of stellar actors hone the humor, their slapstick, so the improv will resonate and remain fresh nightly.


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KRWG.ORG-The Region's Home Page
9:03 am
Thu November 8, 2012
Police: NM Detective's Assault Rifle Stolen
Police says thieves have stolen a semi-automatic assault rifle and other items from an Albuquerque detective's truck while he was playing golf.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that the bandits struck last month the unmarked police truck of Zach Stephenson during a golf excursion at Puerto del Sol in Southeast Albuquerque.
Authorities say among the other items stolen were a "flash bang" distraction device, a shotgun that fires Taser prongs and Stephenson's personal bulletproof body armor.
Deputy Police Chief Paul Feist said in an interview Wednesday that none of the items has been recovered, but officers were notified of the stolen weapons through an internal alert.
Officials say Stephenson's chain of command is conducting an "internal review" to determine whether the detective was negligent in any way.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.


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Strangers on a Train (tour)
Editorial Staff • West End • 31 May 2006
Craig Warner's adaptation began life as a radio play and closely follows the story known by movie lovers. Two strangers meet on a train and discuss the perfect murder. This begins life as a playful proposition but it is clear that one of the men wants to carry out the dastardly deed, leaving the more jovial partner in a deadly position. A classic game of cat and mouse ensues as this meeting and its consequences starts to affect their everyday lives.
All the ingredients for a great stage thriller, you may think. You would be half right as there is a great deal to recommend about this play. The performances are all above adequate and not that over the top. Alex Ferns in particular steals most of the honours. His Charles Bruno is eerily convincing and he does bring the static scenes to life whenever he is on stage. Will Thorp makes a good opposite for Ferns to bounce off. He conveys his character's nightmarish life brilliantly.
Leah Bracknell puts the awful Gaslight behind her and rises above the material this time around as Thorp's partner. Anita Harris tends to ham it up a little as Bruno's overbearing mother but it suits the production. Colin Baker provides the audience with a clue solver as Arthur Gerard. He seems to clearly revel in being the bringer of bad tidings to Ferns' Bruno.
It's a shame then that the pace of the play is not that tight, with some set changes only occurring so that a character can walk across the stage and off again. Jack Thompson's stark lighting is annoying as often you cannot see. Likewise Michael Holt's modern clumsy set detracts from the tension rather than creating it.
However, as deeply old fashioned as it is there is something quaint about this production, and as a genre piece it works. Committed performances ultimately lift the play out of the darkness.
- Glenn Meads (reviewed at the Lowry, Salford).


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Marching in parades is a big part of our performance schedule. See Pom Performance Schedule for parades and/or performances. Directions are always distributed to student's one week prior to the performance.
Miss Chianti's Dance School Of Maryland is not liable for any parade cancellations made by parade officials due to weather or any other reason.
Awards: All students who participate in a performance receive a special award of achievement at the end of the year.
Uniforms: A uniform is required for all students to participate in any public performance.
*Specific details will given out prior to the performance*
Note to Parents
It is an important lesson for all students to learn. We want all the teams/squads to support each other and focus on doing their personal best and having fun!
September 8th Kidney / Cancer Fund Performance @ TBA
September 15th Poolesville Day Parade @ 9:15
September 16th Gaithersburg Olde Town Day @4:15
November 17th Silver Spring Thanksgiving Parade @ 8:45
December 8th Holiday Show @1:30
February 23rd Competition Team Showcase @1:30
March 16th St. Patrick's Day Parade @ 9:00
May 4th Kentland's Day Parade @ TBA
May 25th Rockville Hometown Holidays Performance @TBA
Miss Chianti's Dance School of Maryland
18775-P North Frederick Avenue
Gaithersburg, MD 20879
Phone: 301.519.1800 Fax: 240.427.0231
Email: email@example.com
Contact TekSoftConsulting with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2004 Miss Chianti's Dance School of Maryland. All rights reserved


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SAN ANTONIO - The San Antonio Police Department is holding a special recruiting event at the end of July aimed toward attracting more female applicants to a career in law enforcement.
San Antonio Police Officer Rosemary Caudillo, who has been on the force for nine years, is encouraging women to apply, by sharing her own story of success.
"I got married when I was fifteen and had my first child when I was sixteen," Caudillo said. "Never did I ever dream of becoming a police officer."
Growing up on city's south side, Caudillo said her journey to a career in law enforcement hasn't always been easy. Dropping out of high school by the ninth grade, Caudillo said her career options were limited without an education. Working first as a full-time housewife and then a secretary, Caudillo set her sights on joining the police force.
One divorce, and three children later, she earned her GED, and took classes at Palo Alto College. However, one more obstacle stood in her way.
"It was very hard for me because I was very overweight, I was almost 200 pounds," Caudillo said. "During my lunch breaks I would go and run. About three miles every day while I was at work."
And the hard work paid off.
Caudillo says her job as an officer is both rewarding, and a dream come true.
"Even though we make bad choices or mistakes, anything is possible through hard work," Caudillo said. "This is where my heart is, and I enjoy doing what I'm doing."
SAPD's "Women in Policing" event will be held on Saturday, July 27th from 1 to 3:00 pm at the SAPD Training Academy, 12200 S.E. Loop 410.
For a list of recent stories Isis Romero has done, click here.
Copyright 2013 by KSAT.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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St Louis Rams select Stedman Bailey, WR, West Virginia
3.30 St Louis Rams Stedman Bailey, STL (11) West Virginia – 5'10 193lbs – 4.52 40-yard dash
With the 92nd overall pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, the St Louis Rams select, Stedman Bailey, Wide Receiver, West Virginia.
In 2011, Bailey hauled in 72 receptions for 1,279 yards and 12 touchdowns. He was named to the All-Big East second-team by the conference's coaches. Bailey had his biggest season yet in 2012. He went on to record 113 receptions for 1,627 yards and 25 receiving touchdowns. Bailey re-wrote the West Virginia school record books as he posted (5) consecutive 100+ yard receiving games. Bailey has shown to be a extremely productive player. He showcases tremendous physicality in his routes, uses his hands and body to create separation against DBs and has excellent body control.
Bailey will open the season as the No. 4 receiver for the Rams behind Chris Givens, Brian Quick and former WVU teammate Tavon Austin and has minimal fantasy value in standard formats BUT is worth a mid-late round pick in dynasty leagues and a 2nd -3rd round pick in rookie-only formats as he could overtake Brian Quick's outside job.


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Police appeal after charity shop windows are damaged
Posted: November 22, 2012|
POLICE are appealing for witnesses after two windows of a charity shop were damaged.
The Royal British Legion store in Market Road, Plympton, was targeted at around 9pm on November 18. Police say they believe there was some kind of disturbance or verbal altercation which took place inside the premises first.
Anyone with information about the incident should call police on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111 quoting crime reference number EP/12/1237.
A 42-year-old man from Oreston has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and has been released on police bail until January 18 next year pending further inquiries.