Napoleon was a hugely influential historical figure. Although his life was short, he died at the age of 52. But his life was legendary and magnificent, which greatly changed the course of history, shaped Europe, and left behind the Napoleonic Code, which has become a major historical legacy that future generations cannot ignore. Napoleon's interpretations, interpretations, and his biography are too numerous to mention. The biography of the German Emil Ludwig about Napoleon was a bestseller and received critical acclaim. The recent Hollywood director Ridley Scott's biopic film "Napoleon" focuses on Napoleon's magnificent life, and through the legendary love history of his complex entanglement with Josephine, his little-known inner world is revealed, which has sparked heated discussions, making this historical figure who seems to have been hidden for a long time once again attracted attention due to the current turbulent world situation.
It has been said that a biography is a portrait of a person;It is also said that a biography is an autopsy report. Emile Ludwig's Napoleon is both a portrait and a report, informative and vivid, and his chapter structure is not complicated, telling the legend of Napoleon's life in five chapters: island, stream, river, sea and rock, each chapter is inscribed in Goethe's words, accurate and thought-provoking. Emile Ludwig's text begins with Napoleon's mother, father and his eight siblings, as well as his relationship with Italy and Corsica
A ** wrapped in a blanket sat in a tent, breastfeeding the child while listening to the rumbling sound in the distance. The sun is setting, is there still a firefight?Could it be just the sound of autumn thunderstorms echoing in this barren mountain full of rocks?Or is it the wind blowing through the primeval forests of foxes and wild boars, making the holly oaks and pine trees make a wave of waves?She sat in the smoke and her white breasts half-covered with a shawl, looking like a gypsy woman. What's the battle going on outside today?She guessed, but couldn't make a definitive judgment. Suddenly, the sound of horses' hooves approached the tent. Is it him?He said he was coming, but it was so far from the battlefield, and it was foggy now.
Napoleon attended a military school, and his performance in school was remarkable, but the comments on his report card revealed the direction of his future life: he was introverted, hardworking, did not like to entertain, liked all kinds of research, liked good writers... He is taciturn, a loner, more emotional, arrogant, and very selfish. He was always concise and to the point when answering questions;When it comes to debates, he is quick and confident. He's egoistic and competitive in every way. Napoleon was a man of great reading, and he rented a space in a bookstore and often read there. Books of all kinds are shouting. Reading is like breathing, and you don't have to pay. After reading the books in the bookstore, he could occasionally buy a new book with the two francs he had saved. Although the sound of playing billiards in the next room is annoying because he lives in a café, moving is more annoying than that. He is conservative in his lifestyle and does not like change. What about his emotional aspect?It can well be imagined. For he, like all other youth of his time, there is nothing that excites him more than the state and society. He sat alone next door to the billiard room, pale, immersed in his own spiritual world. While his colleagues had gone out to have fun after a short period of duty, some to the casinos, some to find women, the poor second lieutenant sat in the chamber, and studied with firm intuition and only those things that would be useful to him in the future: the principles and history of artillery, the laws of storming fortifications, Plato's Republic, Persia, Constitutions of Athens and Sparta, History of England, Frederick the Great's Conquests, Finances of France, State and Customs of the Tatars and Turks, History of Egypt and Carthage, Overview of India, Report of the British, Buffon and Machiavelli, History and Constitution of Switzerland, History and Constitution of China, India, and the Inca Empire, History of the Aristocrats, Crimes of the Aristocrats, Astronomy, Geography and Meteorology, Laws of Reproduction, Statistics of Mortality. Rather than skimming through these books and many other materials, he studied them in depth and made detailed excerpts in his notebooks in almost illegible fonts, of which four hundred pages alone were later published in newspapers and magazines. These notes contain complete manuscript maps of the seven Saxon kingdoms of England and their kings in three centuries, the form of racing in ancient Crete, a list of ancient Greek fortresses in Asia Minor, and basic information about the twenty-seven caliphs, such as the number of their cavalry and the misdeeds of their concubines. The most numerous excerpts are about Egypt and India, including the dimensions of the Great Pyramid and the various sects of Brahmin. For example, he once excerpted a passage from Raynal: "Seeing that Egypt was geographically located between the two seas, literally at the junction of East and West, Alexander the Great came up with a plan to place Egypt as the capital of his world empire, making it the center of the world." The most enlightened conqueror realized that if there was anything that could unite all his occupations into a single nation, it could only be Egypt, which could connect Asia and Africa with Europe. Thirty years later, Napoleon still remembers these words vividly.
After Napoleon's rise to prominence, he was surrounded by many heroes from all walks of life, among whom Talleyrand was a very special and important person. What kind of person was Talleyrand?He is not the material of the ruler, but he is good at negotiation, has no enthusiasm but greed, is cold, treacherous, never natural and frank, and always tries to behave like the people he uses at the moment. His pointed nose kept sniffing around to catch the wind as soon as possible. His cunning, cynical head stood above the collar of the Republic adorned with a golden tassel, and it would henceforth be on the ** of the Empire and the Crown;The fourth time the costume was changed, the symbol under this head was the golden vine of Louis Philippe, the king of Ping**. Over the course of forty years, there have been several regime changes, and Talleyrand has always been the right and left hand of those in power. He was never fully attached to his master, so he never lacked relationships. He was a lame man, so his father could not let him wear a military uniform, so he had to wear a Catholic robe, which was worn by the Archbishop of Richelieu to help Louis XIII govern the country. From now on, only Talleyrand could rival Bonaparte, the master of his fate, could no longer get rid of him, even if he hated him. When he finally let Talelan**, it was the right time for the latter: he smiled and stepped over the body of his master, whom he had brought down, and limped into the enemy's cabinet. Talleyrand was the one who overthrew Napoleon, but fundamentally, Napoleon was overthrown by himself. At present, Talleyrand's broad vision and disregard for all principles made a deep impression on Bonaparte from afar.
A German portrayed Napoleon in a personal letter: a short man, no taller than Frederick the Great, well-proportioned, weak, thin, but muscular, with a large head, a high forehead, dark gray eyes, thick, dark brown hair, a Greek nose that almost touched the upper lip, an elegant, human mouth, and a thick, somewhat protruding chin. His demeanor is always lively and elegant. You can see him descending the high steps in five or six steps, but his posture is still extremely graceful when he reaches the bottom. When not looking at a particular target, his eyes are almost always looking upward. It was a pair of beautiful, deep, affectionate eyes, as stern and kind as Frederick the Great's. Every time I look into these eyes, I feel a real enjoyment.
Emil Ludwig said that in his Napoleon, "not a single sentence in this book is fictional, except for an inner monologue". He also quoted Goethe's comments on Briand's Memoirs, in which he hoped that the auraes and visions that journalists, historians, and poets had brought to Napoleon had disappeared before the terrible facts revealed in the book. But the hero does not become smaller because of this, but seems taller. We see from this how powerful the real thing can be, if you dare to say it.
It is difficult to say that Ridley Scott wrote and portrayed Napoleon entirely on the text of Emil Ludwig, and he tells the story of Napoleon, starting with his witness to the French Revolution in Paris, and then the Battle of Toulon, where Napoleon became famous in World War I. Napoleon in the Battle of Toulon, nervous, hurried, apprehensive, frightened, his mount was shot and fell, and his calf was pierced by the spears of the English army. Fire, death, fighting. On this fiery December night, through the smoke and screams, above the piles of corpses, the curses of the drowning citizens and the wild cries of the soldiers who took advantage of the fire, Napoleon rose into the sky like a new star. This was followed by Napoleon's entangled relationship with Josephine, an aristocratic widow, as Ridley described by Émile Ludwig
Soon after taking office, the new commander ordered a ban on private possession, and carried out a comprehensive search, confiscating all the found. One day, a twelve-year-old boy with elegant manners walked into his office and asked for the return of a sword confiscated from his mother, as it was his father's relic. Bonaparte agreed. Not long after, the boy's mother, Josephine, came to thank him. What a charming ** this is!Willful and elegant, he should be over thirty years old, but he can't tell that he is in his thirties. It's not so much that she's beautiful, it's that she's stunning. She wore no corset, was slim, had a noble demeanor, and her brown facial skin showed an exotic look, as she was a Creole who grew up in Paris. In the terrifying years, she learned to use charm as a winning **. The general visited her in her cottage in the middle of nowhere. His eyes, sharpened by poverty, made it clear that the furnishings in her house were trying to hide the poverty of her family, but he didn't care. The twenty-seven-year-old officer, who had just lived a decent, free life, cared about money, but did not respect the rich. Usually, in men, he values talent and nothing else. In the same way, when it comes to women, what he likes is their talents, their appearance, their character, and their use of it.
Ridley thus begins a staggered perspective between Josephine and Napoleon to tell the story of Napoleon's conquests, his marriage, his exile to his final Waterloo, and finally the sudden death of St. Helena. The grandeur and grandeur of the war scenes, the vivid and tragic scenes of Napoleon, the richness of Napoleon's self-confidence and naughtiness, the games and battles between European countries in the twilight, the appearance of various characters, and the horrific behavior of Napoleon when he was crowned are all presented by Ridley. After being crowned Emperor of France, Napoleon personally led his army to meet the anti-French coalition led by the Emperor of Russia and Austria. In the situation of inferior troops, he mobilized infantry, cavalry, and artillery to lure the enemy deep and defeat the opponent in one fell swoop, which is the famous Battle of Austerlitz in history, also known as the "Battle of the Three Emperors". In order to shoot this battle, Ridley Scott called hundreds of actors, hundreds of war horses, and 11 cameras to shoot at the same time, the battlefield spanned hundreds of acres, 360-degree panoramic display, and the scene of countless soldiers and horses of the Russian-Austrian coalition army falling into the piercing ice lake is even more thrilling. Ridley insisted on real-life shooting, without computer special effects, and he spent 5 days filming the Battle of Waterloo, restoring the human-shaped phalanx formed by the British ** team at that time in order to scare away the French cavalry.
The final frame of the film is the subtitles on the empty shot: Napoleon said three words before he died, France, army, Josephine. Josephine is used as the fulcrum to pry the myth of Napoleon, and she as a woman and as a metaphor for France are both objects of Napoleon's desire. Before Josephine and Napoleon officially met in the film, she was a beautiful woman wrapped in a cloak and walking the devastated streets of Paris. The image depicts both a specific woman and a metaphor for France in turmoil after the Revolution. He wrote a love letter to Josephine during his expedition to Italy, and secretly returned to France in the middle of the war in Egypt to launch a coup d'état, which the film transfers, as if Napoleon's return to purge the royalists and return home are two sides of the same coin. The film seems to give the viewer a hint that the great man's boudoir tastes are intertwined with his military and political decisions: when he reached the pinnacle of power, he said to Josephine, "Come to your master";When he fought in all directions, he wrote in his family letter, "Even if you are not chaste, I am still attracted by your elegance and want to return to your arms";He and Josephine fell in love in every corner of the palace, but still could not get an "heir", and after the divorce, Josephine hugged Napoleon's illegitimate son and said: "What a price I have paid for you." "There was no child between Napoleon and Josephine, just as his political ambitions had no successor in France. In particular, Scott enumerated the wars that Napoleon started and participated in, as well as the number of people, which meant something and tended to be obvious.
Andrew Roberts, a British historian and author of Napoleon the Great, said, "The film recreates the long-dismissed image of Napoleon in historiography, and Ridley Scott further adds to his own biases." In Scott's eyes, Napoleon had nothing to accomplish other than tactical awareness on the battlefield... The film does not mention Napoleon's many reforms and positive actions... If Scott had read one of the hundreds of biographies of Napoleon, the hundreds of basic mistakes in the film could have been avoided. However, Ridley Scott made no secret of his "disgust" for Napoleon, saying that he filmed "Napoleon" not out of love, but to express anger, and he did not want to make another film that celebrated historical figures, and "Napoleon" is not a biopic, and will not fully present the life of this historical figure, and the focus of its performance is why this military genius on the battlefield is so obsessed with Josephine and dies. Scott had Napoleon crawl up to Josephine under the tablecloth and cast him as a clown prostrate under the knees of power. A British film critic joked that "Ridley Scott is the Wellington of cinema", Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, and Scott used the film to dismantle Napoleon's prestige after his death.
Goethe once said that Napoleon failed to find morality, but gained power. 102 years ago, exactly one hundred years after Napoleon's death, the French art historian Avery Faure published "On Napoleon", in which he could not deny that Napoleon had started the war, "his cause was immoral, because it broke all the social conventions of an era, and it plunged the whole world into the abyss of war, honor, misery and illusion." But he added: "In his own way, he reaches the limits of his power, towards a goal that he cannot see and that we cannot see." "106 years after Napoleon's death, the 330-minute silent film Napoleon directed by French director Abel Gans is considered the best biopic about Napoleon. Gance's extensive portrayal of Napoleon's youth, focusing on his experiences during the French Revolution, and trying to explain "why a man with nothing chooses to pursue power." The film ends when Napoleon's expedition is triumphant and about to reach the pinnacle of power, and he is regarded as a "people's hero" in the ragged French army. Gönse asked Napoleon to face the mountains of Europe and say heroically: "In this way, there is only one people in Europe, and anyone who travels anywhere always feels that he is in a common homeland." In 1966, Russian director Bondarchuk adapted Tolstoy's War and Peace into a film that gained great fame. A few years later, Bondarchuk continued Tolstoy's comments on Napoleon in The Battle of Waterloo: "The sum of the individual wills of men created the revolution and Napoleon, but the sum of these wills tolerated them and then destroyed them." ”
The 86-year-old Ridley Scott became famous very early, and he directed "Alien", "Blade Runner" and "Crazy Flower of the End", which is known as a word of mouth. In recent years, his "Gladiator", "Heavenly Dynasty", "Prometheus", "The Martian", "The Last Duel", etc., have also had a great influence.
Napoleon with different opinions, Napoleon with a single word.
Wang Zhenyu.