Napoleon

Although I did not get to see the whole movie, I did look up clips of Napoleon by Abel Gance in order to find the significance and the uniqueness of the movie during its' time period. The first thing that I noticed while watching clips of the film was the scale of the scenes. I may be underestimating the abilities of filmmakers in the early 1900's, but I always seem to be amazed at the large scale that they are able to shoot their scenes. For example, the huge snow ball fight,war scenes, and scenes in the government buildings, in Napoleon, I would have never thought that a scene with the large of a background and set would be able to shot that early in the 1920's. The other thing that surprised me was the use of the camera. How it was used as a moving camera, as the eye of the beholder, rather than a still camera shot. It's a very modern way to shoot movies, slightly ill to the eye and stomach, but very cool to watch nonetheless. It is also unique to the time period to do such quick shots and such fast moving movements. I feel as if many movies during this time period had extremely drawn out scenes with slower transitions. Last but not least, the most unique part of Napoleon for the time period was the use of the three screens. The three same shots all playing next to each other, but in different colors is very powerful and extremely symbolic, as the colors are the colors of the French flag. Not only does Gance use the same shots, but he also played around with different shots sandwiching another shot in order to compare and contrast the two different scenes.