Waterloo



The end of the Sixties pretty much ended the period of the Epic film, with a few exceptions. Disaster films became the rage. But one of the last of the big Epics came out in 1970. That was Waterloo, an Italian-Soviet Union co-production, produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, famous for his huge production of War And Peace. The film featured an international cast headed by Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as Wellington. The exterior battle scenes were filmed in the Ukraine. Others in the cast included Dan O'Herlihy, Virginia McKenna, Jack Hawkins and Orson Welles. More importantly for lovers of spectacle the Soviet Army provided around 15,000 troops to portray the French and Allied armies.

Jack Hawkins had lost his voice to cancer and was dubbed by Robert Rietty. I have seen a couple of sources claiming he was dubbed by his friend Charles Gray, and the egotistical Rich Little claimed he did the dubbing in an appearance on the Tonight Show. The prints I have seen of the film for the United States and Great Britain releases were in English. I am guessing it was dubbed into appropriate languages for release in other countries.

Waterloo is reasonably accurate as history films go. To make things easier to follow events have been combined or telescoped. As most battles are, Waterloo was pretty confusing to follow, so liberties were taken, but none fatal. Bondarchuk's camera offers incredible vistas as thousands of Napoleonic era soldiers fill the screen. And these were real, live people. Today they would be computer generated, more's the pity. The superb score, containing original music and authertic music of the period was by Nino Rota, Fellini's favorite composer.

Sadly the movie did not fare well at the boxoffice but was well worth seeing on the big screen. At one time Paramount put the movie out on video tape. I recently obtained a Hong Kong release of the DVD which must have been the British release as there are some differences between it and the earlier Paramount release.
The performances are overall good except at times Steiger gets a bit too Method and Dan O'Herlihy seems to overact some as Ney, but from reports of the time Marshal could be pretty dramatic and had a tendency toward hyperbole. Plummer stands out as Wellington and Philippe Forquet is excellent as Napoleon's aide. I also like the performance of Serghej Zakhariadze as Prussian Field Marshal Blucher.
Waterloo is certainly worth a look for the student of history as well as a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the big Epics. I doubt another film will ever be made on the same scale, with the same number of people. Sure CGI can create some big spectacles (Gladiator for example) but it's just not quite the same thing.

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