Waterloo

1970 "One incredible afternoon Napoleon met Wellington . . . at Waterloo."
7.3| 2h14m| en| More Info
Released: 26 October 1970 Released
Producted By: Paramount
Country: Soviet Union
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.

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Reviews

Alicia I love this movie so much
Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.
Robert J. Maxwell Napoleon (Steiger) escapes from exile in Elba, returns to France, defeats some enemies, and is himself defeated once and for all by Wellington (Plummer) at Waterloo in Belgium.I have no idea how closely this movie follows the historical event, never having been a Napoleon freak, but Rod Steiger is certainly different from David's heroic portrait, pointing the way to victory atop that fiery horse. (Cf., the ads for Napoleon brandy.) Napoleon's early victory's were behind him. He was fifteen years older now and had a bad case of the trots.Steiger makes him extremely gloomy, like that character in the Peanuts comic strips that walks around under a little cloud. What suffering. Steiger gives Napoleon two modes of speaking -- an ear-shattering shout or a hoarse hiss.His opposite number, the Duke of Wellington, who massacres the French troops with the aid of the Prussians, is played by Plummer as aristocratic, cool, and ironic. Wellington won more than the battle. He won more memorials than Napoleon. Wellington not only had a tasty dish of pastry-wrapped roast beef named after him, but a boot as well. What did Napoleon get? A high-calorie pastry. Well, come to think of it, there's that brandy, so maybe the battle was Wellington's but the memorials are a tie.The first hour of the movie shows us the character and circumstances of the two leaders. The handsome Wellington dances around in a palace, resplendent in crimson frock, making wisecracks, while Napoleon broods in drab gray, in pain, alone, carrying on with himself in an interior monologue. There is a brief appearance by a bloated Orson Welles as Louis XVIII. It's the high spot of the film because Welles treats the role as a joke. Otherwise humor is totally lacking.The second hour is -- well, you have never seen so many extras, whether or not half of them may have been mannequins, and no CGIs either. The battle is a confusing and muddy mess. BANG. BOOM. It goes on and on, obscured by smoke and a sudden storm. There are dead bodies in red and blue all over the vast landscape. It's impossible to follow the details of the engagement but easy enough to grasp the overall picture.Sergei Bondarchuk is quick to use crane and helicopter shots to capture all the money that was spent on the production. It must have cost as much as the original battle itself. But some of the shots are bizarre. An aide whispers something in Steiger's ear and there is a cut to an enormous close up of one -- just one -- of Steiger's eyeballs. The overall impression is that the direction was done by an amateur with an awful big budget.I'm recommending it though. Too many college students don't know who Napoleon was. If they've heard the name at all, it's been in the expression "Napoleonic complex." So I advise all high school kids to watch it. Look at the funny hats they wore.
rennets66 Without a doubt this is the greatest historic battle film ever made. The effort that went in to this film is unprecedented. I watched this when I was young and I was so in awe of the film that I developed a life long love of history. These days when it is possible to portray battle scenes with computer graphics we will never understand how much effort went in to drafting in an entire Russian division and kitting them out in Napoleonic uniforms.But its not just the huge cavalry charges and carefully researched accuracy of the film that impresses. Christopher Plumber and Rod Steiger both put in excellent performances as Wellington and Napoleon. This film should clearly have scooped the Oscars, why it didn't we will never understand.
denis888 Sergey Bondarchuk knew how to make epic war films - his War And Peace is a real masterpiece of grand scale battle scenes, deep emotional ups and downs, real psychologies, decent camera work and naked nerve tension. Here, he repeated his winning formula, but in some ways, he failed to make it a perfect war movie. Why did it happen? Since I am not a movie critic, but merely a movie fan, I can draw my conclusions on several bases - 1. The movie is too long at times and has a bad tendency to drag, which makes it a bit painful to endure. 2. There are obvious goofs and errors in editing, very clear and evident, which rob us of bigger enjoyment. 3. Some parts are performed very shallow and not so deeply convincing. Yeah, even the main characters do suffer some over-play syndrome. 4. The ideas are repeated shamelessly from War And Peace - it is very clear and obvious. All of that add to a lesser rating of a somewhat faulty but still good movie
TerryDaniel My third viewing of Waterloo was probably the best viewing of the film I had had.It appears this film gets slightly better every time it is seen.This really was one of the last huge battle epics that came from the 60's and early 70's. Rod Steiger plays Napoleon pretty well but it goes from French to English to American apart from that good portrayal of the trumped up little Frenchmen. The director Sergie Bondarchuk had filmed a similar film to this a year before called War and Peace.I see this as an unofficial sequel to War and Peace as it battles and ball room dances are similar in style. I was very happy to see Spaghetti Western legend in this film Gianni Garko who stared as Sartana the gambling gun slinger in countless films.Al so spotted in this film was Coronation Streets Fred Elliot but was refrained from saying "I want meat,I say I want meat.This film time is comfortable at roughly around 2 hours.A great score as well by Nino Rota who previously had scored Visconti's "The Leopard and later went on to score "The Godfather". Orson Welles is all so in this film for about film minutes if you don't know who he is well his that morbidly obese character who plays Louis XVIII with some what of a British accent. I would love to have seen this film on the big screen i only hope one day it comes out in some poky art house cinema.