After Bondarchuk made his colossal reproduction of War And Peace. ( Comparing King Vidor 's version to it is like comparing a paint by numbers watercolor to The Night Watch.) he was naturally chosen by the notorious Dino DeLaurentis to make the battle film to end all battle films, Waterloo.
Waterloo! Is any battle more famous, or more proverbial? With a superb score, a remarkable eye for detail, and stunning overhead shots. ( Not to mention an entire Soviet Army division ), Bondarchuk recreates the highlights of the Napoleonic battle to end all Napoleonic battles. ( Quite literally.)As far as I can tell, the only historical flaw is that The film makes it appear that Wellington's army was exclusively composed of British redcoats, ( Incidentally, one of the best British regiments wore GREEN coats.)when they were only about a third of the "Iron Dukes" polyglot and multi national army. The Kings German Legion, The Dutch, The Danes, the Hessians and the Belgians, are conspicuous by their absence.)
However, what really makes this film stand out is the excellent acting, beginning with the protagonists. Steiger, with his " New York School " method acting, captures the many shades of Napoleon's character: the brilliance, the rages, the sudden bouts of lethargy, the volcanic Corsican eruptions of love and hate.Plummer, the Canadian product of Stratford in the fifties when Sir Tyrone Guthrie was its guiding spirit, brings a very different style to a very different figure. Plummer's Wellington is dry, ironic, skeptical, a man of extraordinary coolness under fire, whose outward stoicism is relieved by sudden flashes of humor and even compassion. He has a job to do. He does it admirably, and at the end, he has lost all stomach for war. Dan O'Herlihy is superb as Ney, a man of extraordinary courage- and absolutely no judgment. Jack Hawkins, sadly at the end, still captures the gruff doggedness of Picton. Finally, there is Welles. This is from the phase of his career when he would do five minutes as Cardinal Wolsey, then five minutes as General Dreedle, all to raise enough money to somehow, someway, finish Don Quixote. Its Tuesday, so Orson is " working for the Russian on the Waterloo thing", doing five minutes as Louis the Seventeenth- and doing it magnificently, playing the corpulent shadow of the Bourbon dynasty as more of a tragic figure than buffoon.
A tremendous effort. Somehow, poor marketing, studio interference and the poor taste, historical ignorance and general stupidity of the American cinema going public lead to box-office failure, which had even more tragic consequences. Kubrick's proposed biopic on Napoleon was not green lighted, thus depriving the world of what should have an even greater film than Gance's Napoleon.
