Tweet The full Napoleon to be screened in the US at last.....

I have orchestra seats for the 31st. Hope to see a lot of you there.

I have orchestra seats for the 31st. Hope to see a lot of you there.

Squeeee!

I have orchestra seats for the 31st. Hope to see a lot of you there.

I'll be there, in the balcony on that night. Looking forward to seeing you!

The hotels that offered special deals for the San Francisco Silent film Festival like the Rex, etc., look great from the pictures and are cheaper than the grand hotels. Check out the SFSFF site to see them.

The Rex is a few blocks up the hill from Powell St. BART, just off Union Square, and the Chancellor is even closer. Plus the Chancellor is home to the legendary San Francisco breakfast spot, Sears Fine Foods!

greta

The hotels that offered special deals for the San Francisco Silent film Festival like the Rex, etc., look great from the pictures and are cheaper than the grand hotels. Check out the SFSFF site to see them.

The Rex is a few blocks up the hill from Powell St. BART, just off Union Square, and the Chancellor is even closer. Plus the Chancellor is home to the legendary San Francisco breakfast spot, Sears Fine Foods!

greta

The Hotel Whitcomb is clean and comfortable, not too expensive, and has both BART and cable car stops. http://www.hotelwhitcomb.com/

The hotels that offered special deals for the San Francisco Silent film Festival like the Rex, etc., look great from the pictures and are cheaper than the grand hotels. Check out the SFSFF site to see them.

The Rex is a few blocks up the hill from Powell St. BART, just off Union Square, and the Chancellor is even closer. Plus the Chancellor is home to the legendary San Francisco breakfast spot, Sears Fine Foods!

greta

The Hotel Whitcomb is clean and comfortable, not too expensive, and has both BART and cable car stops. http://www.hotelwhitcomb.com/

Lovely lobby, i had lunch at the restaurant last month, and the location is VERY convenient. There's a handy Starbucks there, too.

For budget hotels, I've had good luck with the Hotel Beresford, just up the street from the Rex (and thus a bit of a hike)
http://www.beresford.com/beresford/Default.htm
and the Cornell, a block or two further, i think
http://www.cornellhotel.com/

greta

Lovely lobby, i had lunch at the restaurant last month, and the location is VERY convenient. There's a handy Starbucks there, too.
greta

It's located within a block of SF Public Library's main branch, too, and there might well be an interesting exhibit at the library. I don't know how much longer the current silent film related exhibit will be there.

Lovely lobby, i had lunch at the restaurant last month, and the location is VERY convenient. There's a handy Starbucks there, too.
greta

It's located within a block of SF Public Library's main branch, too, and there might well be an interesting exhibit at the library. I don't know how much longer the current silent film related exhibit will be there.

For that matter, it's also a couple blocks from the Asian Art Museum, and the San Francisco Opera House and Davies Symphony Hall are down the street. No opera at that time of year, but there may be symphony and ballet.

greta

There's a handy Starbucks there, too.

"Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks" (And I'm in Seattle)

There are a couple of friends coming from Italy to see this, now....

There are a couple of friends coming from Italy to see this, now....

You mean they missed the Pordenone screening or simply want to see it again?

If they like Valentino, we'll get along fine

There are a couple of friends coming from Italy to see this, now....

You mean they missed the Pordenone screening or simply want to see it again?

If they like Valentino, we'll get along fine

They will be just fine with Valentino, I'm sure; one was probably too young at the time of the last Italian screening, the other is generally too involved in the running of Pordenone to actually see anything much.....

So I finally ordered the Flicker Alley Gance DVDs after staring at them *and their largely static $35.99 price point) longingly for three years. Now is most certainly not the time to say that I have never seen an Abel Gance film before, but both J'accuse and La roue would seem obvious primers for Napoléon...

since i cant make the showing in SF, i hope it will be in the dc area someday. also i know mr brownlow said it will not be on dvd, but do you all think it will within the next 4 to 5 years (for those who cant get to a showing). maybe it will be at the tcm classic film festival too someday.

I suppose that this time around it will bypass Syracuse and Schenectady.

By all reports, it'll bypass everywhere except Oakland.

And to think that Ms Stein said there's no there there...

i say by the end of 2012 or 2013, the full 5 and 1/2 hour version will be on dvd (along with the coppola version just to make coppola happy). i would love to see it when its in SF but i dont have the money. hope it will be on the east coast someday too.

i say by the end of 2012 or 2013, the full 5 and 1/2 hour version will be on dvd (along with the coppola version just to make coppola happy). i would love to see it when its in SF but i dont have the money. hope it will be on the east coast someday too.

And I very much doubt it. And even if it does emerge, it is one of those films that will not seem the same in your living room. Even if you do have three TV's lined up.....

i know but it will be better then flying out to SF. hope it will be in the dc area sometime soon (even if its recorded music like they did with metropolis when it was here in the area last year).

They said at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival that this is the only time and place it is playing in the States. Brownlow stated himself that he didn't think it would ever come out on DVD/Blu-Ray.

i know but it will be better then flying out to SF. hope it will be in the dc area sometime soon (even if its recorded music like they did with metropolis when it was here in the area last year).

All of the press has said Oakland is it, no other shows, no DVD. So don't get your hopes up. This is a vastly expensive project to mount, and I'm not surprised that they aren't road-showing it. It's actually not that hard to get to Oakland, if this is an important film to you.

At the Q&A after, I think, The General at the Academy, someone asked Brownlow if we could hope for a DVD. His response: yes, you can hope. (or something similar to that effect...)

It's such a pity that the Coppola situation is blocking the Brownlow version from being released. I've seen the full version with live orchestra and it was brilliant - I have the Coppola DVD but don't like the score much.

It's not the Coppola version that's keeping it from being released on DVD. It is thanks to Coppola giving his blessing that Brownlow's version is now being screened in the US. It's just that with costs to transfer this version and the declining rates of return on DVDs, no one wants to put it out.

It's not the Coppola version that's keeping it from being released on DVD. It is thanks to Coppola giving his blessing that Brownlow's version is now being screened in the US. It's just that with costs to transfer this version and the declining rates of return on DVDs, no one wants to put it out.

Let's not congratulate Mr. Coppola in this matter. It was because of his insane egotism in bringing suit against the showing of Brownlow's version that the film remained tied up in court when the economy and popularity of DVD were ripe for release. Because of Mr. Coppola many of us may never get to see this masterpiece. We owe Mr. Coppola nothing but contempt.

[Mike Gebert]

Come on.

The guy insisted on the US version because his father wrote the score for it (and I have never thought it deserved the contempt ladled on it as music, either; both Coppola and Davis beat the Marseillaise pretty heavily in their scores for it).

Whatever you think of that, he made its original release in the US possible. Nothing but contempt for that? You wouldn't be arguing about the score for Napoleon in the first place if he hadn't made it a sensation in this country; it'd be like arguing over the right score for The Loves of Casanova or Nana.

I thought the Carmine Coppolla score wasn't all that bad- at worst uninspired. Coppolla's training and experience were straight out of the silent era so good or bad it's very much the kind of score you'd have heard when the picture was new- or at least released in the USA.

Come on.

The guy insisted on the US version because his father wrote the score for it (and I have never thought it deserved the contempt ladled on it as music, either; both Coppola and Davis beat the Marseillaise pretty heavily in their scores for it).

Whatever you think of that, he made its original release in the US possible. Nothing but contempt for that? You wouldn't be arguing about the score for Napoleon in the first place if he hadn't made it a sensation in this country; it'd be like arguing over the right score for The Loves of Casanova or Nana.

I don't have contempt for Carmine Coppola's score; it's perfectly adequate for the film. But F. F. Coppola's insistence that his father's score be the only one the public should ever hear, and his reconstruction the only one the public should ever see is deserving of contempt. If he believed his version was superior, why suppress Brownlow's and not let it compete with his? The fact that it was tied up in court for so long, and will now be seen by comparatively few people is an on-going tragedy that will not be mitigated by the U. S. showing.

It wasn't that Coppola believed that his version was superior, but that he owns copyright to the picture and could with it what he wished. Without Coppola's approval the Brownlow version could never be shown in any form in the United States.

[Mike Gebert]

If he believed his version was superior, why suppress Brownlow's and not let it compete with his?

This just doesn't really resemble the film's history that much. This is my memory of how this has played over the years, if I'm wrong on any details, please correct me:

The reconstruction is Brownlow's. Napoleon is a film with no definitive shape and it is not necessarily better with every last scrap of film in it. Hold those thoughts.

After the Telluride film festival honoring Gance (Telluride being run by, among others, Coppola pal/adviser Tom Luddy), Coppola was involved in acquiring the rights for US screenings, which would never have happened on such a scale without his backing. He did so, it seems clear, in large part to give his dad a showcase as composer and conductor.

Union rules in the US made a screening over 4 hours prohibitively expensive for live orchestra. So Brownlow created a US cut which runs about 4 hours, and that's what Carmine Coppola scored. Insofar as ANY cut of Napoleon constitutes Kevin Brownlow's choices about what makes a coherent version of the material, one should not mistake this for being like Miramax cutting a half hour out of a contemporary director's finished work— but rather a practical decision by Brownlow to construct a workable version of the movie at a certain length. (It's possible someone else cut it to 4 hours, but Brownlow at minimum accepted this as a necessity for the symphonic tour.) Up to this point, I think everyone was happy and friendly.

Years pass. Carmine Coppola passes away in 1991. And Brownlow continues to find pieces, so Napoleon grows and grows. At some point the version released and occasionally screened in the UK and elsewhere is notably longer than the Coppola-US version. Brownlow wants to release a longer version in the US; Coppola wants to preserve the version his dad worked on. I disagree with that, or think there could have been a way to fudge a longer version with music by his dad or by someone else in a similar style... but again, we're talking about two competing Brownlow-shaped versions.

And in the end, Coppola has agreed to a screening of this latest version with music not by his dad. What a terrible guy!