WATERLOO (1970)
DIRECTOR:
Sergei Bondarcuk
CAST:
Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles, Dan O'Herily, Jack Hawkins, Virginia McKenna, Gianni Garko, Michael Wilding, Donal Donnelly, Aldo Cecconi, Orso Maria Guerrini, Terence Alexander, Charles Borromel, Oleg Vidov, Charles Millot and Franco Fantasia.
REVIEW:
Yet another international spectcular Dino de Laurentiis battle epic, in the league with The Longest Day, Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu.
Rod Steiger stars in another "maniacal dictator" role, this time as Napoleon. He escapes exile in the Mediterranean, returns to France, overthrows the King (Orson Welles) and leads the French army against Wellington (Christopher Plummer) at Waterloo.
The film's central elements are the three "Cs" most important to war films: Cast, Combat and use of Crew. Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer are perfectly cast. Steiger paces, yells, sweats and frets a lot -- much more than he does in The Last 4 Days. His performance in that film is legendary, and here he is ten times as good. That's gotta say something. His great, unrestrained performance holds attention completely when the pace lags during the first hour. Plummer is a perfect opposite, as a stiff-backed British aristocrat. He keeps his calm in the most desperate of situations -- officers need reinforcements he cannot send; his soon-to-be son-in-low dies a slow death at the hands of the French; and a friend gets a leg blown off and says "My God, I've lost a leg." Plummer replies emotionlessly "My God, you have." There's a huge number of international supporting players and cameos, too: a Jack Hawkins sounds like a frog as a British General; Orson Welles (Battle Force) is almost unrecognizable in wig and make-up as King Louis XVIII; Gianni Garko (Five for Hell) appears briefly as a French officer; and Oleg Vidov (The Battle of Neretva) pops up in as a British infantryman who goes mad. (This scene is cut from the US home video) The film originally ran four hours, and the American video release is cut down to just over 2 hours. This explains why some of the big-name actors have little do, and why others are credited and can't be spotted.
The second hour of the film is dominated by the huge battle at Waterloo. Bondarcuk mixes zoom-ins, fast pans, crane shots, helicopter shots -- everything -- and edits it all together so quickly that the battle almost comes off the screen right into your living room. A good deal of the Red Army appear as extras. Literally, the film has a cast of several thousand. It's not like a typical epic where there's a shot of a few hundred guys and they just get moved around for the next shot to look like more men -- there's actually several thousand men in several shots. It's not that bloody, but there are lots of big, loud explosions to help with the realism.
To top it all off, there's some great attention to period detail, with plenty of 1800s costumes and amazingly accurate hair-dos and make-up jobs. The cinematography is superb, so is the scenery, and the epic music score by the great Nino Rota is excellent.
The video from Paramount is of only marginally acceptable quality. It's typically pan-and-scanned, which detracts from the epic scope of the battle scenes. The focus is pretty hazy, too. Colors are accurate and there's not much print damage. Sadly, it runs just over 2 hours -- not the original 4-hour cut. According to the IMDb, the 4-hour cut was destroyed, and we will probably never see this version.
All around, a magnificent film, with magnificent acting, magnificent editing, magnificent combat. A must-see.
SGT. SLAUGHTER'S RATING:
5 Bullets
ON DVD HERE
