Film / Napoleon (2023)

"All of Europe is uniting forces against me."

"I am destined for greatness. But those in power only see me as a sword."

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon is a 2023 epic American-British historical biopic film directed by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa. It also marks Scott's return to the Napoleonic Wars era after his debut film The Duellists.

The film broadly depicts aspects of the life of French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) including his rise to power during The French Revolution, his addictive and volatile relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), some major battles he fought against other European powers, and his eventual downfall.

It was released in theaters on November 22, 2023. It will be streamed on Apple TV+ at a later date, including a longer cut than the theatrical one.

For the 1927 film by Abel Gance, see here. For the 1955 film duology by Sacha Guitry, see here. For the 2002 miniseries, see here.

Previews: Official Trailer.

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Napoleon contains examples of:

• Abandoned Area: As in Real Life, Napoleon enters Moscow to find the city mostly abandoned, and the Kremlin completely empty. He thinks it's "not sporting" that no one remained to negotiate with them.
  Napoleon: 300,000 souls live in this city, and they all left?
• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Joséphine has an affair while Napoleon is busy warring in Egypt.
• Adipose Rex: King Louis XVIII (younger brother of Louis XVI) is seen during the Hundred Days after being put on the throne during the Bourbon Restoration, with his characteristic obesity (though not much indicates that he has gout, he used crutches and a wheelchair in real life).
• Advertising by Association: The trailer mentions "From Ridley Scott, the acclaimed director of Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, The Martian".
• All There in the Script: A lot of historical characters (for instance, Napoleon's sisters, many of Napoleon's generals, etc.) appear as minor characters who are never mentioned by name and barely have any lines (if at all), but can be found in the credits.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: Downplayed. The song "Ah! ça ira" is not anachronistic for the Revolution era in itself, but the version of it used in the film being a cover by Édith Piaf (whose voice is instantly recognizable) most definitely is.
• Art Imitates Art: Several scenes were made to resemble artistic depictions of the Napoleonic era.
  • Napoleon on his horse before the Sphinx in Giza, like the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting from 1867-1886.
  • The coronation is straight out of Jacques-Louis David's rendition of it with the exact same regalia, crown etc. David is even seen sketching it as it happens.
• Artistic License – History: Ridley Scott would respond to claims of historical inaccuracy by asking if the complainer was actually there. As can be seen here, he definitely wasn't.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Napoleon's coronation on December 2, 1804, complete with the part-Roman part-French monarchy inspired regalia he wore that day.
• Beard of Sorrow: It's downplayed, but in the last scene when Napoleon is in exile on St. Helena, he's unshaven.
• Blatant Lies: While in exile in St. Helena, Napoleon claims that he burned Moscow to the ground. One of the girls he tells this to immediately counters that the Russians burned it, to deny him the ability to claim it as his own. She even comments that everyone knows that. He's rather put out.
• Bungled Suicide: Upon being arrested, Maximilien Robespierre shoots himself in the head, but fails to hit his own brain, breaking his own jaw instead.
• Citywide Evacuation: When Napoleon reaches Moscow, the city is empty. It is then ravaged by fire.
• The Coup: The Coup of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (November 9th 1799) is the event that enables Napoleon's rise to power. When Napoleon comes back from Egypt, it’s clear to him and to everybody that the five-man Directory in charge of the republic is bungling both the wars and the economy. One of the directors, Sieyes, approaches Napoleon and asks him to participate in a plot to replace the Directory with a three-man Consulate that will consist of Sieyes, Napoleon, and Roger Ducos (another director). 18th Brumaire goes smoothly, with director Barras resigning under pressure while the Jacobin directors Gohier and Moulin are arrested when they resist. The day after goes considerably rougher: the deputies of the Council of Five Hundred are outraged at the coup and physically assault Napoleon when he tries to intimidate them into silence, forcing him to desperately flee the chamber and return only when he and Lucien have summoned a large number of soldiers.
• Danger — Thin Ice: A big action set piece has the Russians fleeing after Napoleon pounces on them at Austerlitz. One Russian soldier slips and falls and is shocked, while scrabbling through the snow, to find that they are on a frozen lake. Sure enough, the French artillery firing on the Russian army starts breaking the ice, and men and horses start falling through.
• Dead Guy on Display: During Napoleon's invasion of Russia, groups of Cossacks harass his armies and nail French soldiers they killed at trees to scare/intimidate the others.
• Decapitation Presentation: Marie-Antoinette's head is lifted and presented to the crowd after the guillotine blade beheaded her.
• Deuteragonist: The film gives a prominent place to Napoleon's love story with Joséphine, who is the second character with the most screen time beside the title character. She provides some posthumous narration in a few scenes set after her death.
• Demoted to Extra: All of Napoleon's siblings other than Lucien are reduced to non-speaking parts.
• Downer Ending: Napoelon loses the Battle of Waterloo, gets exiled very far from Europe, and dies.
• The Emperor: Napoleon, of course. When Talleyrand advises him to get crowned king, he prefers the title of emperor, and ends up crowning himself, not wanting to let The Pope do it.
• The Exile: Napoleon is exiled twice after being defeated.
  • The first time in 1814, it's on the isle of Elba. He goes back to France to retake his throne the following year.
  • The second time in 1815, the British take him to the remote isle of Saint Helena, to make sure he'll never escape this time around.
• Face Death with Dignity: Marie Antoinette holds her head high as she's led to her execution.
• Fan Disservice: To go along with the Lousy Lovers Are Losers approach of the film, the sex scenes of Napoleon and Joséphine weren't made to arouse. Both are clothed each time, Napoleon taking her doggy style was filmed in the least glorified way possible, and she doesn't seem to particularly enjoy it.
• A Father to His Men: As often depicted and per Real Life, Napoleon is beloved by most of his armies and his Old Guard. Upon his return to France from his exile in Elba, the Fifth Regiment that he once created is tasked with arresting him, only to ditch that once he presents himself to them not afraid to be shot at, cheering for him and joining his forces.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: The cavalry's role in general on the battlefields. By the end at Waterloo, Napoleon tries to break the British infantry's squares by throwing all his cavalry on them, only for the British to resist the charge, rendering them pointless, which gives enough time to the Prussian cavalry to join the fray and defeat Napoleon.
• Foregone Conclusion: Any viewer with any cursory knowledge about the subject knows Napoleon's reign ended on the disastrous Waterloo defeat, and he spent the rest of his life in exile.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The tagline "He came from nothing. He conquered everything".
• Frontline General: Napoleon is several times portrayed personally giving orders to his troops while being on the battlefield, and a couple of times he personally leads cavalry charges.
• The Ghost: Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who replaced Napoleon in the handling of the campaign of Egypt, is mentioned twice but never seen.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: As noted in Shown Their Work, the movie is full of spectacular (and highly accurate) uniforms - the Napoleonic Era was one of the great periods in military fashion - as well as elegant women's dresses and gowns. The trailer alone shows the progression from the diaphanous, almost see-through "neoclassical" dresses popular in the 1790's to the high-waisted, often very elaborate dresses of the "Empire" period following Napoleon's ascent to the throne. To non-French fashion historians and fans, the period is better known as the Regency era (after the regency of the Prince of Wales during the incapacity of his father King George III), but fashionable British women took their cues from the styles of Paris, so much so that diplomatic packets traveling across the Channel between Britain and France would carry issues of the latest French fashion magazines.
• Heir Club for Men: There's much pressure on Napoleon and Josephine to produce a male heir for the French Empire, and them not being able to do so drives most of the drama after the coronation. They eventually divorce (after it's been proven that Josephine is infertile), Napoleon marries Marie-Louise of Austria, who eventually gives him a legitimate son.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: Napoleon being a Frontline General is Truth in Television, but he never personally led cavalry charges.
• Historical Ugliness Update: Napoleon is given the cleft lip of his actor, Joaquin Phoenix, even though he wasn't born with one such in Real Life.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: Despite the use of artistic license to paint Napoleon in a more villainous light (see below), the film omits the worst atrocities of his rule, such as the re-imposition of slavery in the Caribbean after its abolition in 1794, the massacres of the black Haitians during the Haitian War of Independence,^note The Count de Rochambeau, the head of the French expeditionary force, even wrote to Napoleon saying that the population had become "too accustomed" to freedom and that only the extermination of every black man and woman above the age of 12 and the re-importation of new slaves from Africa could preserve French rule in the country as well as the massacres of the Spanish and Portuguese during the Peninsular War.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • Contrary to what the film depicts, Napoleon did not fire cannons at the Pyramids of Giza; his actions during the Egyptian campaign show that he greatly respected Egypt's architecture and heritage.
  • Napoleon is depicted slapping Josephine when she says they should divorce. Historians dispute this, as most accounts on their marriage detail how Napoleon for all his many faults did genuinely cherish his wife calling her his "sweet and incomparable Josephine" in letters and wouldn't have ever raised his hand against her like he does here.
• Hollywood Tactics: In every single battle scene.
  • Napoleon attempts to horse charge the British fort at Toulon, only for his horse to be predictably shot out from under him by a cannonball.
  • The cavalry in the film act as if they're medieval armored knights. Austro-Russian cavalry are shown charging directly into the French breastworks at Austerlitz, which is naturally suicidal and accomplishes nothing. Napoleon also strangely sends his cavalry against the British breastworks at Waterloo. Muskets and cannons had long since made such knight-like tactics obsolete by Napoleon's time.
  • At Waterloo, Wellington counters Napoleon's cavalry charge by pushing out his line infantry from their trenches in order to form squares and decimate the French cavalry. While forming squares was an actual anti-cavalry tactic, it was a defense formation that wasn't meant to be used offensively, especially when the infantry could easily shoot each other from being to close together. It would've been smarter to just stay in the trenches and let the horses fall over the breastworks.
• Home Field Advantage: Russia and its dreaded winter are the hardest conditions Napoleon's armies face by far, with well-equipped Russians making ample use of Hit-and-Run Tactics and forests to ambush them. Then after Moscow is evacuated Russians just wait for the cold to kill what's left of Napoleon's Grande Armée.
• It's All About Me: Napoleon's visiting Josephine's daughter after her death smacks of this. Granted, he's clearly taking it badly, but his immediate reaction after the initial shock is to make sure she, nor anyone else, could possibly blame him. Then, when she tries to offer commiserations by way of "I'm sorry", his only response is a gobsmackingly insensitive "I forgive you" (as if she, the grieving daughter, is somehow at fault) before storming out.
• Kissing the Ground: Napoleon gets down and kisses a French beach after he returns from his exile in Elba.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: During Napoleon’s coup, Paul Barras is the only member of the Directory that is shown to make absolutely no fuss about the situation and takes his overthrow completely in stride.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Napoleon desperately wants to have a baby (preferably a son, to have a heir, but in any case someone to continue his bloodline) with Josephine and though they try for years, she never gets pregnant. To find out if the problem lies with him or with her, Napoleon sleeps with another woman and gets that woman pregnant, so apparently it's Josephine who was infertile between the two of them.^note Josephine had had children with the husband she had before she met Napoleon, but she apparently wasn't fertile for long. Considering that in real life she was oer 40 by the time Napoleon was crowned emperor, it's probable that by then she entered menopause
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: While Napoleon is presented as a successful military and political leader, he is also shown to be a loser in his personal life. His sex with Josephine makes him look like a lousy lover and he has poor self-esteem away from the military and political arenas.
• Love Hurts: One of the movie's main focuses is, as the studio put it in previews, "the addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine". This qualifies as Shown Their Work as the couple went through a lot of ups and downs. One example was when Josephine had an affair with a young officer while Napoleon was in Egypt, causing the latter to come close to divorcing her though he was persuaded otherwise. When he actually - reluctantly - finally divorces Josephine in 1808, it is under the intense pressure of producing a heir for the nation's future; Josephine (who was six years older than Napoleon when they married) was probably menopausal by then, and when Napoleon brings her the baby he's had with Marie-Louise, she tells him (the baby) about how much she sacrificed for France and him.
• Lured into a Trap:
  • At Austerlitz (December 2, 1805), Napoleon lures the Austrian and Russian forces to a frozen lake where he has his artillery shatter the ice to make them sink. This is based on an incident that happened there, where anywhere from 200 to 2,000 Russian soldiers were drowned due to the frozen ponds they were retreating against having been hit by French artillery bombardment, though it's uncertain whether the lakes were specifically targeted. There has been controversy as to whether the incident (as reported by Napoleon himself) was exaggerated, but Tsar Alexander I, who commanded the Russian army at the battle, confirmed years later that it did happen. In any case, this is more of a Shout-Out to a famous similar scene from Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky.
  • Russia is a gigantic trap for Napoleon's armies. After a while, the Hit-and-Run Tactics of the Russians and the Russian winter decimate them.
  • Napoleon's army at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, and more precisely his cavalry. Napoleon thinks of the British as not competent enough on land against someone like him, but the infantry of The Duke of Wellington proves resilient enough against his while waiting for the Prussian cavalry. Napoleon's own cavalry shatters against the English infantry squares and the Prussian cavalry finishes them off.
• Make an Example of Them: Said verbatim by Barras to Napoleon (as a general) as he's tasked to handle mobs in the streets of Paris in 1795 (the famous "whiff of grapeshot" incident in which Napoleon violently dispersed royalist mobs by firing on them point-blank with cannon).
• A Million Is a Statistic: The film seeks to avert this trope by listing the numbers killed in each battle and in Napoleon's wars as a whole, and by showing the sheer bloodiness of battles in the period. It hints that Napoleon himself regards those numbers as the price of his glory, though.
• Mononymous Biopic Title: Napoleon. There were two other French emperors by that name (with only one who actually reigned, his nephew), but this is about the most famous one.
• Monumental Damage: The Pyramids of Giza being fired at, though not hard enough to make them collapse. This is pure Artistic License – History possibly based off the urban legend that Napoleon had cannons firing at the Sphinx of Giza nearby and causing its nose to break (the nose was missing centuries before he was born, actually, and his expedition brought scientists to study Ancient Egypt, he actually had respect for the local monuments).
• Never My Fault: Napoleon is incapable of acknowledging that it is even possible for him to make mistakes, even after his final defeat he places the blame on his officers. He delivers the following line with no irony:
  "I'm the first to admit when I make a mistake. I simply never do".
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Like Ridley Scott's previous work about this area, none of the actors playing French characters attempt to sound French at all and keep their natural British or American accents.
• Nothing Is Scarier: There's an eerie feeling in the air when Napoleon enters a completely empty Moscow, just before the apocalyptic fire ravaging the city.
• Off with His Head!: The film opens on Marie-Antoinette being brought to the guillotine and executed, during the Reign of Terror in 1793.
• One True Love: Joséphine clearly is the love of Napoleon's life in the end despite everything their couple goes through, including divorce (the latter for national matters more than anything else).
• One-Woman Wail: The track for the burning of Moscow starts with a brief ethereal woman's wail.
• Produce Pelting: Marie-Antoinette gets vegetables thrown at her on the way to the guillotine for her Public Execution.
• R-Rated Opening: The film begins where Marie-Antoinette's life ends, graphically depicting her death by guillotine and the executor showing the crowd her freshly-decapitated head.
• Reality Is Unrealistic:
  • Joaquin Phoenix, who stands at about 5'9, got some complaints that he was "too tall" to play Napoleon. In reality, Napoleon, contrary to popular belief, was about 5'7, a bit short but a long way off the borderline dwarf he's often been imagined as, and he was actually slightly taller than the average Frenchman of the era. He also stood significantly taller than women of the period; the average height of women in the same era in England was barely over 5 feet.
  • While the movie is set at a time when the French population was much, much less racially diverse, the black French officer appearing in a couple of scenes (especially the ones set during the Egypt campaign) is historically accurate. According to the credits, this character is Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (1762-1806), one of the very few men of African descent (born in nowadays Haiti from a slave mother and a white master) leading European troops as a general officer, and the father of famous writer Alexandre Dumas.
• Re-Cut: The film exists in two versions: a theatrical version which lasts two and a half hours, and a TV version which is one hour longer. Ridley Scott has stated in interviews that the theatrical cut is his preferred version.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Martin Phipps largely lifted "Russia" (for the namesake campaign) from his own work on 2016's War and Peace.
• Regional Riff: In the soundtrack, "Austerlitz Kyrie" and "Bonaparte’s Lament" are sung by traditional polyphonic choirs from Napoleon's birthplace, Corsica. This is quite unique and unusual among depictions of Napoleon's life, since, even though he was born there, he's never really put forth his Corsican origins beyond his support to independentist Pasquale Paoli, which stopped when he settled in metropolitan France and pursued a military and political career there.
• Reign of Terror: The film opens with the execution of Marie-Antoinette in 1793, when France was under the Trope Namer, a time when many "suspects" were hastily judged and brought to the guillotine.
• Salt the Earth: Tsar Alexander I prefers leaving Moscow empty and burning than negotiating with Napoleon when the latter reaches the city. Since the fire destroys everything, Napoleon's army can't spend the winter there and is forced to move back to Poland, which will prove devastating.
• Scenery Gorn: The view of Moscow burning is an apocalyptic sight to behold.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Several Napoleonic era scholars have noted how good and accurate the uniforms look (something that is usually hit and miss in productions about the era).
  • Napoleon attends a Victims' Ball (ball for the victims of the Reign of Terror in the much less repressive era that followed the downfall of Maximilien Robespierre), with women wearing dresses and shirts imitating the clothes worn by the people who were condemned to the guillotine plus a small red lace tight around the neck to symbolize cut off heads. While Napoleon wouldn't have attended such a ball due to not having any relatives executed during the Terror (see Artistic License – History above), those indeed happened.^note Napoleon, who was pro-Jacobin during the Terror, did get briefly arrested and imprisoned after the overthrow of Robespierre, though he was soon released.
  • During Napoleon and Josephine's wedding scene, the civil worker reading Napoleon's identity refers to a 1768 birth date, while historically Napoleon was born in 1769. That's not an error but an obscure bit of trivia: in real life Napoleon and Joséphine deliberately wrote fake birth dates on the marriage papers to reduce their age gap.
  • This might be the first movie ever to have Napoleon and have zero mention about his height (or lack thereof). Napoleon being short is a long debunked myth, he was 5’ 7”. Normal height by today's standards, and slightly taller than average at the time. There is a subtle reference to it when the British sniper is watching him through his scope. Napoleon often surrounded himself with unusually tall guards for just that reason which made him look short by comparison. The British then used that as propaganda, and a tired cliche was born…..
• The Siege: The siege of Toulon near the beginning, which was Napoleon's first major feat of arms in Real Life.
• Superweapon Surprise: The French Royalists allied to the British who hold Toulon didn't expect to be bombarded by Napoleon's small howitzers, which are shown to be much more effective to hit the ramparts' pathways (and thus the soldiers on them) than standard cannons.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Hortense de Beauharnais (Joséphine's daughter from her previous husband) is played by Erin Ainsworth as a child and Isabella Brownson as an adult.
• Translation Convention: The film is an English language production the main historical character of which (and plenty of others) is/are French.
• Traumatic Haircut: It's never outright stated, but when Joséphine first meets Napoleon, her hair is uneven, spiky, and only about two inches long. She later mentions having been imprisoned during the Revolution because of her first husband, and an attentive viewer can guess her hair was probably chopped off in prison. It doesn't detract from her beauty or attract negative attention, however- especially not for Napoleon, who falls in Love at First Sight- and she grows it out again over the course of Napoleon's courtship.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: Once the Republic's forces led by Napoleon take the ramparts of Toulon to the Royalists, they use the latter's cannons to shoot at the British ships (which are allied to the Royalists).
• Villain of Another Story:
  • Robespierre appears briefly in the film justifying the Terror, only to later be shown falling from power and botching his suicide attempt. An entire film could've been made about Robespierre's journey to becoming the leader of the French Revolution, the institution of the Great Terror, the betrayal and execution of fellow allies and former friends, his genuine zeal for the Revolution, and his sudden and precipitous fall.
  • Talleyrand appears and clearly is a dark and shrewd political operator, but the film barely skims the surface at how much Talleyrand magnificently survived to be in positions of power throughout the Revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Burbon Restoration. He also is particularly infamous in the United States for the X.Y.Z. Affair that led to the Quasi War with France and America that dominated John Adams' presidency.
• War Is Hell: The film pulls no punches in showing how hellish war could be at the time, such as the damages caused by cannonballs in the soldiers' ranks, the helpless Austrian and Russian soldiers sinking in the cold and bloodied waters in Austerlitz and Cossack guerilla nailing dead French soldiers that they ambushed at trees during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. Further emphasized by the number of deaths of each battle being indicated before they begin, as well as a total number of deaths of the Napoleonic Wars being indicated before the end credits roll (which are contested by Napoleonic era experts).
• Well-Intentioned Replacement: Before the relation between Napoleon and Joséphine starts, Joséphine's son Eugène comes at Napoleon pleading to have the saber of his father Alexandre (an officer who was guillotined during the Reign of Terror) returned to the Beauharnais household. Napoleon agrees to do it since it will get him closer to Joséphine, and there's a place where the sabers of executed officers are stored. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to put the former owners' names on them. Having no other option bar being empty-handed, and since the sabers all look similar, Napoleon picks a random one and brings it to the Beauharnais home.
• Winter Warfare:
  • The battle of Austerlitz happened in early December 1805, and there's snow and a frozen lake on the site.
  • Napoleon's ill-fated 1812 invasion of Tsarist Russia faces the dreaded Russian winter at one point, and determined Russian guerilla that are well equipped for such weather, unlike his army. As Napoleon's retreat goes on, many of his men get frostbite and die of hypothermia and diseases.

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"I'm the first to admit when I make a mistake. I simply never do."