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Beyoncé eat your heart out, there’s a new shadowdrop champ in town. Not content with releasing one historical epic this year, Ridley Scott has been secretly beavering away on a second, with Napoleon: The Director’s Cut now available to stream on Apple TV+.
Adding 48 minutes of new footage – taking the total runtime to a whopping 205 minutes – Napoleon’s new cut significantly expands the presence of Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine, adds the brief but beautiful Battle of Marengo, a thrilling assassination attempt and a harrowing new sequence during the invasion of Russia, enriching an already terrific picture. A film we called ‘one of Ridley Scott's best films in almost two decades’ in our review is now unquestionably his best since, well, the Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven.
Speaking from Scott Free HQ in early August shortly after screening The Director’s Cut for Total Film, Scott was on typically entertaining form, fully aware that at 86-years-old he is a living legend; one who knows what makes a great movie, even if scissor-happy studios don’t always agree.
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Total Film: Why did you feel that Napoleon warranted the director’s cut treatment?
Ridley Scott: Well, you could do a film that ran a week about Napoleon Bonaparte. Really, the biggest challenge is: how the hell do I narrow this down? The story of Napoleon is so complex, and I only wanted to look at the man. Not so much the battles, but more the man, and what makes him tick, and his obsession with somebody called Josephine.
Josephine gets a significant amount of extra screen time in the Director’s Cut…
She was not at all attracted to him at all, but she engineered to pretend that she did. And from that, she had nowhere else to go. Where is she going to go? The street? The extra [48 minutes] is not entirely devoted to Josephine, but it’s devoted to them, together. You start to get who, what, where, and why. Some may prefer it as a cut. And, that said, I think I do.
The Battle of Marengo is a short but striking new addition. Why reinstate it?
I acknowledge Marengo just to say, “And there were more [battles].” It’s pretty spectacular. You can’t tell Napoleon's story without talking about the battles, and the 66 battles are over a pretty short space of time. So I’ve got to be very selective there as well. You can’t sit there for 10 weeks watching battle after battle. And, also, violence gets boring. Have you noticed that? There’s a lot of movies out now which are all about violence, and all about action and I can’t watch them.
We see the full extent of the hardships that pushed Napoleon to abandon the invasion of Russia in the director’s cut. Did you consider those scenes too brutal for the theatrical cut?
It’s worse than that: I begin Waterloo with him on the lavatory! I think it’s great, because he’s actually bleeding from the ass. He has piles. And piles can easily develop as a horseman. When he’s in Russia, there’s blood on the saddle. And then someone looks in and says, “Piles, my lord!” Everybody thought it was so comical to start off the Battle of Waterloo with piles. I thought it was great. That’s life, man.
You worked with Joaquin for the second time on the film – was he the same actor you remember from Gladiator?
I love doing star-driven pieces. Joaquin was always in mind because I had a very rewarding time with him on Gladiator, and it was a challenge, as you can imagine. He said, “Why do you work with me?” I said, “You keep me honest.”
We came in this room I’m in right now [at Scott Free], and we did a huge reorganisation of [the Napoleon script], about 10 days from shooting. It was a long shift. Because he suddenly comes and says, “I don’t think I can do this.” I said, “What?!” But he’s great. He always does that. I think he does it deliberately to scare the shit out of me, to make sure I’m paying attention.
Is there a part of you that laments not being able to release your director’s cuts in cinemas?
I can’t disassociate myself and what I do from the marketplace. If you do, you’re a fool, and you won’t last long. But, actually, thank God for the platforms, because I embrace the way you can show a film, whether it’s in cinema – which I would always embrace as choice number one. But, number two, is the platforms, which really save these films, because the quality of the platforms is better than it is on celluloid. A good TV set doesn’t cost anything today. I’ve got a set that’s 5ft across. It’s frankly as good as any screen. So if you’re a TV watcher, put your hand in your pocket, and buy a proper goddamn TV.
Which do you consider your more successful director’s cuts?
I did another film where we removed 45 minutes of the movie, and shouldn’t have done – it’s called Kingdom Of Heaven. So now you get, in that story, what happened to the Princess of Jerusalem. That’s true. She euthanised her child, because she knew he had leprosy. The problem here is, it ends up – and always will be – art against commerce.
Is that why several of your films have only later been released intact?
I’m not saying I do art, but I try. Occasionally, I circle art. But I’ve always got a mind on my audience, because I’m in deep respect of anybody who’s prepared to give me money for my next budget. So I try to be responsible and a partner in that process, so that I get what I want, and they get what they want. It’s an interesting equation because you can’t say, “Fuck you.” You’re not going to win. You’re going to lose. Orson Welles said, “Fuck you.” He went and did what he did. Except he did make three marvellous movies.
It’s an incredible luxury to be able to cut 48 minutes from a film given the time and money involved at this level. Are you fairly ruthless when it comes to killing your darlings in the editing room?
‘Ruthless’ is a bad word. I’m good at stepping back and looking in. I don’t get buried in the film anymore. The danger is, when I began doing commercials, I’d sit there, literally in the edit, and do every frame with the editor. Then the films, it was the same thing. It was quite a long time in the editing room.
I think it was Black Rain that I started to ease back. I had a great editor called Tom Rolf, and I left him to it, maybe because he was so grumpy. I gave him some fantastic footage. And he was always smoking in his room. So was I. So I would give him space. And then he cut the movie, and I went, “Christ, that’s great. I didn’t realise the film was going to be so good.”
What I’m saying is: you need a great editor, and not to go into the editing room until the editor says, “OK, I’ve got a scene. I’ve got a reel. Do you want to see it?” Because once I’ve prepared casting, recce’d it, and shot it, I’m so buried in it. I’m numb to what I’ve just done. It’s best to hand it over to a fresh mind, and let them get to it. And then I’m fresh to see what they’ve done with it. So it’s like handing over a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and saying, “Tell me when you’ve done the left-hand corner.”
Are there any films you’d like to go back to and give the director’s cut treatment? Is there a director’s cut of The Duellists or Thelma & Louise or Black Rain in you?
No, I think they’re all pretty good. I’m serious. I think they’re pretty fucking good.
When you spoke to us about Napoleon last year you mentioned a cut that ran 250 minutes. Is that extra footage still on the cutting room floor somewhere?
Yeah. We cut a four-hour version. So if this goes well… I think: why wouldn’t they [release] it? It doesn’t cost them anything. All you do is press a button. If you like the long version, then there’s a four-hour version. You’d have to [colour grade it], that would have to be done. You have to mix it. The four-hour version is always on the Avid, on the machine.
Napoleon: The Director’s Cut is now streaming on Apple TV+.
For more check out our guide to the best shows on Apple TV+ right now.
