WATERLOO Movie Review
1971 Sergei Bondarchuk
To appreciate this realistic re-creation of one of Europe's most important battles, fans of war films must ignore the first hour. (Don't forget, every VCR has a fast forward button.) That part of the movie is devoted to Rod Steiger's maniacal portrayal of Napoleon. It may be his most apoplectic performance in a career not noted for restraint, and it is difficult to take him or the character seriously. As his antagonist, Wellington, Christopher Plummer makes the most of a less-flattering character, but neither of them is really that important to the battle itself, and that's a stunner. It takes up all of the second hour and is widely regarded as one of the most accurate depictions of a major battle ever put on film.
Novelist, historian, and screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser devotes several pages of his fine book, The Hollywood History of the World (Beech Tree Books. 1988) to Waterloo and flatly states that it is “quite the best battle film ever made, both as a motion picture and as a piece of history.”
The story begins at Fontainbleu on Wednesday, April 14, 1814, with Napoleon having been driven back to Paris by armies of Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England. (Throughout the film, director Sergei Bondarchuk uses subtitles to identify place and time. Though the device seems intrusive at first, he is establishing its importance for the second half, when it keeps the action clear during the battle.) At the insistence of his advisors—chief among them Marshal Ney (Dan O'Herlihy)—Napoleon abdicates his throne and is sent in exile to Elba with his most trusted soldiers. Ten months later, he's back and a corpulent Louis XVIII (Orson Welles) dispatches Ney to get rid of him. Meanwhile, Wellington is in Brussels and knows that he'll have to fight again.
In that first half, the influence of Italian director Sergio Leone is hard to miss. The film is structured like a spaghetti western, with extended preparations for conflicts and long silent closeups. Alas, Napoleon isn't silent enough. He bellows, he rants, he convulses, he scowls, a single tear pools in the corner of his eye. Steiger leaves toothmarks on every stick of scenery. For his part, Plummer plays Wellington as a stiff-backed upper-class Brit with a certain roguish zeal. Though Bondarchuk, again like Leone, constantly intercuts between the two men, they never appear in the same frame.
Once Bondarchuk settles on the fateful clash of armies, the tone and look of the film change dramatically. The battle is fairly simple in strategic terms. The two armies face each other on hillsides with a shallow valley between them. It's a mostly open field, so each general can observe the other's tactics and troop movements. That's where Waterloo comes into its own. Seldom have so many extras been organized into marching and mounted units and then choreographed with the accompaniment of spectacular artillery barrages and roaring walls of flame. Bondarchuk goes far beyond the conventional crane and tracking shots of a few hundred horsemen or infantry moving across a flat plain. He uses high-angle aerial camerawork to show off thousands of extras (many of them members of the Red Army) moving in complex formations. In the most impressive of those, a tidal wave of French cavalry breaks against huge “squares” of British troops. No other comparable film comes close to the scope of Waterloo.
The only criticism that can be leveled at the battle scenes concerns the lack of recognizable common characters. We never experience the action from the point of view of the guy on the ground with a rifle in his sweaty hands. Perhaps it's asking too much for one film to provide both perspectives, and Bondarchuk's sweeping overview is an impressive achievement.
Cast: Rod Steiger (Napoleon), Orson Welles (Louis XVIII), Virginia McKenna (Duchess of Richmond), Michael Wilding (Ponsonby), Donal Donnelly (O'Connor), Christopher Plummer (Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington), Jack Hawkins (Gen. Thomas Picton), Dan O'Herlihy (Marshal Michel Ney), Terence Alexander (Uxbridge), Rupert Davies (Gordon), Ivo Garrani (Marshal Soult), Gianni “John” Garko (Gen. Drouot), Ian Ogilvy (William De Lancey), Andrea Checchi (Sauret), Jean Louis (Oudinot), Willoughby Gray (Capt. Ramsay), John Savident (Gen. Muffling), Adrian Brine (Capt. Normyle), Jeffrey Wickham (Sir John Colborne), Sergei Zakariadze (Marshal Gebhard Blucher), Richard Heffer (Capt. Mercer), Aldo Cecconi (Charles X), Peter Davies (Lord Richard Hay), Eugene Samoilov (Vicomte Pierre Cambronne); Written by: Sergei Bondarchuk, H.A.L. Craig, Vittorio Bonicelli; Cinematography by: Armando Nannuzzi; Music by: Nino Rota. Producer: Dino De Laurentiis, Mosfilm, Columbia Pictures. Italian, Russian. MPAA Rating: G. Running Time: 122 minutes. Format: VHS, Closed Caption.