Whereas documentary filmmaker and former assistant director to Abel Gance, Nelly Kaplan's prior half-hour program "Abel Gance, Yesterday and Tomorrow" (1963) gave an overview of Gance's career, this one-hour show, "Abel Gance and His Napoléon," focuses exclusively on his masterpiece, "Napoléon" (1927). So unusually dynamic a cinematic expression is this film that even before Kevin Brownlow started exhibiting restorations in the 1980s, which would culminate in the collaboration with the BFI that brought a five-and-a-half-hours version to home video (a considerable improvement over the four-hours version projected at an incorrect speed for Francis Ford Coppola's VHS release back when this documentary was made), various studios and Gance himself edited the picture into various forms, there are the shorter "Opera" and longer "Apollo" versions, so-called for where these cuts were exhibited, as well as cuts for other releases, such as a later sound version. A list of 30 different versions of the film on Wikipedia puts something such as the seven cuts of "Blade Runner" (1982) to shame.
The value of this particular documentary is in the primary material displayed, including Gance's diary entries for and stills from the production, but especially the filmed scenes of the making of the movie, for which Gance was once again ahead of his time in 1927 in enlisting another crew to film his production--a standard practice now. Of course, this is the same guy who filmed the climax with a triptych camera set-up for an early widescreen effect and only after a single-camera widescreen process that also produced stereoscopic and color effects proved unsatisfactory.
Some other highlights from this production footage include the early handheld, "steadicam" work done for young Napoleon's dormitory sequence, which has been seen elsewhere, such as in Brownlow's documentary "Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite" (1968), tracking shots from cars and bicycles, shots of crowds gawking at scenes being filmed, and images of injuries incurred on set--one from horse riding and another burns from an explosion. There's even an amusing gag where the cameraman rotates the camera clockwise and at least one of the subjects being filmed thinks to hold onto the contents atop the table lest imaginary gravity drop them while they're upside down. We also see how Gance would fire a gun to call for action or, apparently, to inspire actors in at least one instance. This rare glimpse at primary cinematic material alone makes this documentary worthwhile.
