Kubrick's "sweeping epic" Napoleon was never to be
*
Most film fans will know that Stanley Kubrick’s final project A.I. Artificial Intelligence was only half-finished before he died, Steven Spielberg subsequently taking the reigns. However, another of Kubrick’s films never even made it to the filming stage. This, despite meticulous research, planning and writing.
Napoleon was to be “at once a character study and sweeping epic replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras”. Alas, it never saw the light of day.
Publishers Taschen have now released a new edition of Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Film Never Made. The 1,112 page book (the original was a ludicrously-deluxe carved out affair, which sold for £900 a pop) charts Kubrick’s obsession with the French emperor, and boasts an “unparalleled trove of research and reproduction materials”. Said trove includes over 30,000 production images (yup, Kubrick was a perfectionist alright), essays on Napoleon, and a full treatment for the film (of course this would have been heavily edited had it actually been shot).
So why was Napoleon never made? If the director had had it his way, it would have been the follow-up effort to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yet simply, on seeing how much money it was going to cost if done properly (and Kubrick wouldn’t have it any other way), both MGM and United Artists declined funding such a project.
Although the plug was pulled on Napoleon, Kubrick still got to make a couple of period epics during his career; Lolita was preceded by the Oscar-winning Roman slave saga Spartacus, while later on in his career, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon depicted the story of an Irish upstart’s rise to the aristocratic ranks in the 18th century. Clearly, Kubrick was a man who took his history lessons seriously.
Though his films ventured into war zones, outer space and the even the future, wouldn’t it have been marvelous to see what Kubrick did with full-blown ocean battles.
Maybe a young film director somewhere will read this new book and take it upon themselves to finish what Kubrick started. Then again, perhaps some things are better left as lost masterpieces.
1 Comments.