Abel Gance's film is a work inflamed by an exasperated Jacobin nationalism on the very edge of xenophobia in its hagiographic exaltation of the famous Corsican. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 22, 2024

It is, and no mistake, one of surely not more than six filmgoing experiences of a whole lifetime, not to be missed for the sheer joy of it. Napoleon is a film against which all the others have to be measured, now and forever.

| May 14, 2024

Napoleon is the greatest of French films. The producers were fortunate in securing so fine an actor as Albert Dieudonné to interpret Napoleon. He has personality, fire, looks.

| May 14, 2024

[Abel Gance] is a little too determined to exploit the kinema's possibilities. He is a florid director, so that as the spiritual falls emphasis on technique rises. This is unfortunate because the technique, though grandiose, is extraordinarily haphazard.

| May 14, 2024

Smacks too much of battle scenes, badly photographed, and too little of personal activities of the little general to please us greatly.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 14, 2024

An extremely valuable addition to the list of worthwhile photoplays brought to this country from abroad. Distinctly foreign in its treatment... Napoleon should appeal to those lovers of the European cinema.

| May 14, 2024

A remarkable picture in many ways, but not one calculated to catch American attention, save as a novelty.

| May 14, 2024

[Napoleon] has been pictured by Abel Gance in a manner commensurate with its inspiring sweep and scope. In Albert Dieudonné he has found an artist who impersonates the Man of Destiny to perfection.

| May 14, 2024

One can get so tired of symbols. His mysticism is exaggerated, and the patriotic note sometimes descends to bathos... [But] Napoleon, in spite of these defects, is a wonderful spectacle.

| May 14, 2024

Directed by one Abel Gance, who is held to be a great, great genius of the French cinema, it is revealed as pretty awful stuff; acted by hams and equipped with a banal and frightful story which all but nauseates those who know anything about M. Bonaparte.

| May 14, 2024

The scale of conception and presentation, the coherence of action in drawing room or on battlefield, the handling of great historical figures, and the detailed observation of marginal people reflected the genius and powerful imagination of [Abel Gance].

| May 14, 2024

A time-travel excursion back into the era when Cinema was spelled with a capital C.

| May 14, 2024

Here is an artist who not only dared to do the impossible -- cameras or horseback or swinging on a pendulum -- but knew how to assemble his material with rapid and multi-superimpositions to create cinematic poetry.

| May 14, 2024

Napoleon is a triumph of pure cinematic style over conventional expectations. There is no "characterization" in the usual sense, though in the title role Albert Dieudonné gives a great silent performance of looks, gestures and poses.

| May 14, 2024

If you are one of those people who have been complaining that movies aren't like they used to be, you owe it to yourself to see Napoleon and see just how right you are.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 14, 2024

As an artifact from the days when directors were deciding what the movies were to be, when filmmakers were discovering what film could do and advancing the art by quantum jumps, Napoleon is a vast textbook-on-film, a masterpiece of the early days.

| May 14, 2024

I have never seen a movie that combines such large scenes with such small, unforgettable details.

| May 14, 2024

One remains most conscious of the dark, brooding intensity of Dieudonné's Napoleon -- which, creating the effect of a man driven by the irresistible inner force of his own destiny, commands attention whenever the camera comes within range.

| May 14, 2024

Napoleon is a razzle-dazzle show of sight and sound, but it is also a marvelously told, good-humored biography of one of history's men of destiny.

| May 14, 2024

A monumental accomplishment that should be seen by as many movie-lovers as possible.

| May 14, 2024