Waterloo

Some thirty years ago, the composer Carl Davis produced a score for the silent film Napoleon, which led to him doing a sequence of silent scores presented with orchestra in London. For his latest, he has gone back to another film concerning Napoleon, the 1929 German film of Waterloo.

I notice in the movie connections for this film the suggestion that the 1971 film Waterloo was a remake. Apart from the historical events of the battle, there is very little similarity between the films. This is a very German view of the battle, centring around Blücher, who barely features in the 1971 film (or in English school history), and the Congress of Vienna.

Blücher is played as a randy old goat with an eye for the ladies, but still very much in love with his wife. He has decided not to attend the congress and tenders his resignation. But Napoleon leaves Elba and his services are needed.

Added to this is a plot involving a Polish countess acting as a spy for Napoleon attempting to seduce Reutlingen, Blücher's adjutant, and intercepting a message from Blücher to Wellington telling him he's on his way to help at Waterloo.

The battle is about the last half hour of a film over two hours long with little attempt to show the progress of the battle. The battle has long started by the time the action moves to the battlefield.

The battle is not depicted with any of the attempt at realism you'd see today, but I imagine trying to have a sword fight in a group of people on horseback must be difficult without injuring each other. In one scene, a group of highlanders march off and one manages to knock the hat off the soldier in front with his bayonet.

Incidentally, the highlanders' kilts seem rather short - above the knee - compared to kilts one sees nowadays. I don't know if this is historically accurate.