Abel Gance – Napoleon vu par Abel Gance [2024 restoration] (1927)

A monumental masterpiece of silent cinema, Abel Gance’s 1927 fresco has been reedited many times, to the point that for a long time it was impossible to determine its original form. Director and researcher Georges Mourier and his team have now completed the restoration after sixteen years of hard work. This unedited 7-hour version was presented as a world premiere in an exceptional two-part ciné-concert on July 4 and 5 at La Seine Musicale.

“A monster” is how Georges Mourier describes Abel Gance’s Napoleon, a monumental fresco dating from 1927, which traces the life of the future emperor from his childhood through to the first stirrings of the Italian campaign. Georges Mourier, director and researcher in charge of restoring the film for the Cinémathèque Française, had to battle for sixteen years to tame the “monster”. An unruly “monster” which, over time, became a veritable cinephilic sea serpent. Abel Gance himself, drowned by the excess he had orchestrated, seemed to have lost the thread of a film whose versions he multiplied (there are said to be 22 different versions!). The filmmaker, who died almost forty-three years ago, had made Bonaparte such a fixation that he signed up to a veritable personal body of work: no less than three additional feature-length films in addition to the multiple edits of his original Napoleon. Among those lucky enough to discover this Napoleon, who could be certain of having seen the version closest to the one secretly intended by Gance? Not many. And besides, did this “perfect” film really exist? If so, wasn’t the material scattered to the four winds, long since lost or even too damaged to be used? All these questions dogged Georges Mourier for almost a decade.

Napoleon vu par Abel Gance - Premiere partie - La jeunesse de Bonaparte.1927.1080p.WEB-DL-Threnodyy.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	3 h 51 min
Size: 	8.14 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 941 kb/s
BPP: 	0.095
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 96.0 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E6F9694ABC144C9/Napoleon_vu_par_Abel_Gance_-_Deuxieme_partie_-_Napoleon_et_la_Revolution_francaise.1927.1080p.WEB-DL-Threnodyy.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/F6591FE86CCF9EA/Napoleon_vu_par_Abel_Gance_-_Premiere_partie_-_La_jeunesse_de_Bonaparte.1927.1080p.WEB-DL-Threnodyy.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/2D1748EA0C119BC/Napoleon.1927.Part.1.RESTORED.1080p.WEB.H264-FW.srt
https://nitro.download/view/3F754DF9E8E509E/Napoleon.1927.Part.2.RESTORED.1080p.WEB.H264-FW.srt

Language(s):None (apart from one song sequence in french) (French intertitles)
Subtitles:English