This script for Stanley Kubrick's never-made film "Napolean"

October 4, 2000 4:47 PM

This script for Stanley Kubrick's never-made film "Napolean" probably won't be online for long.
posted by grumblebee (12 comments total)

Oops ... misspelled "Napoleon." Sorry.
posted by grumblebee at 4:52 PM on October 4, 2000

...except that it's already been up on that site for at least three months. Why won't it be online for long?
posted by gluechunk at 4:54 PM on October 4, 2000

The production notes at the end make for interesting reading...

"A picture file of approximately 15,000 Napoleonic
subjects has been collected, cataloged and indexed, on
IBM aperture cards. The retrieval system is based on
subject classification, but a special visual signaling
method allows cross indexing to any degree of complexity."
posted by Brilliantcrank at 5:28 PM on October 4, 2000

Someone seems to be hunting it down. If you do a search for "kubrick napoleon" on Google, you'll get a lot of URLs. Most of them no longer work.

According to a recent Salon article, the script is no longer on the web. Obviously, Salon is wrong, but I suspect the Kubrick estate is trying to get it removed from the web.
posted by grumblebee at 6:04 PM on October 4, 2000

You know how these things work. It will probably jump from site to site forever. I should have said it probably won't be at that location for long.
posted by grumblebee at 6:05 PM on October 4, 2000

Well there's always eBay!
posted by gluechunk at 6:07 PM on October 4, 2000

Well, I just downloaded it. I'll have a detailed look later. Thanks. Is there any provenance for it?
posted by davidgentle at 9:04 PM on October 4, 2000

Wow. I just read that. It's really good, and would've been quite different from any Kubrick film I know of. Half biopic, half military documentary. The script had a few of his favorite themes. Three way conflicts, duplicitous characters...

I wonder what turned him off to it? Maybe he made Barry Lyndon instead of Napoleon. Maybe he was tired of war and biopics.

You guys know of any good Napoleon movies?

The Salon article Grumblebee mentioned.

thanks!
posted by capt.crackpipe at 9:50 PM on October 4, 2000

Regarding "good Napoleon pictures", avoid the movie Waterloo like the plague. Not only is it based on a false history of the battle, but the acting sucks. In a career of chewing the scenery, Rod Steiger hardly leaves any without teeth marks in this film. I admit it is quite a spectacle, one of those "cast of thousands" films, but historically it stinks. (One of the comments on the IMDB claims it's historically accurate. He's behind the times. Recently it was proved beyond doubt that the traditionally accepted story of Waterloo is a complete fabrication.)

If you can possibly do so, locate this silent film. It came out a few years back on laserdisk and it's a masterpiece. According to the IMDB it's available on VHS. It's very long, but still well worth watching, albeit you have to make concessions to the conventions they used to make silent movies in the late 20's.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:57 PM on October 4, 2000

Thanks for the link grumblebee. Does anyone know if there's an "AI" script around?
posted by aflakete at 11:28 PM on October 4, 2000

I believe the reason he abandoned it was either money or that he didn't think that you could tell the story of Napoleans life in just 3 hours. I'm sure everyone here has seen this but it's one of the first really useful things i found on the internet when I came online last year. AMK faq. Also their main page is here.
posted by davidgentle at 6:10 PM on October 5, 2000

The Salon article capt.crackpipe posted (above) goes into great detail about why the film was never made. It's also an interesting description of Kubrick's working methods.
posted by grumblebee at 7:09 PM on October 5, 2000