TV/Movies Megathread

[grumbler]

Funny how napoleon got rehabilitated. Wasn't he like the hitler before hitler in Europe? The boogeyman name people used to describe bad guys/leaders. Or am I misremembering?

British "history" of the period paints him as such, but he's seen elsewhere as more Caesar than Hitler.  Both were probably decent men that, by the end, were corrupted by absolute power.

[garbon]

"Were you there? Oh you weren't there. Then how do you know?"

That is a troubling quote.  I wonder if the production employed any historians to try to get at least some of the story correct and if so, how many times they were ignored.  It seems the movie portrayed him as a peasant, rather than from a minor aristocratic family.  I suppose the producers decided it was more important to be faithful to the tag line of coming from nothing and conquering everything rather than introducing some historically accurate context.

   

I was told, regarding another one of that director's films, that if you take yourself seriously, your film is historical.

[grumbler]

Funny how napoleon got rehabilitated. Wasn't he like the hitler before hitler in Europe? The boogeyman name people used to describe bad guys/leaders. Or am I misremembering?

Not the way I remember things.  Military genius, short, tried to conquer all of Europe, fucked up.

Maybe he's treated differently in Canuckistan?

The "short" thing is British propaganda.  Fact:  all of Napoleon's wars except (arguably) his invasion of Spain in 1809 and (certainly) his invasion of Russia in 182 were defensive wars.  The "tried to conquer all of Europe" claim is  just another bit of British propaganda.

[Threviel]

Egypt?

[grumbler]

Egypt?

He invaded Egypt on the orders of the Directory.  He was still just General Bonaparte in those days.

[Duque de Bragança]

The invasions of Portugal, starting in 1807, defensive wars by Napoleon? 

[Duque de Bragança]

Much love for Napoleon in Spain. Possibly our favorite  Frenchman, and you all know we love the French a lot here.

No love for Napoleon over here. In Portugal. 

[grumbler]

The invasions of Portugal, starting in 1807, defensive wars by Napoleon? 

Good point.  It was actually the invasion of Portugal that was the offensive war.  The war in Spain was defensive.

[Threviel]

I hold Napoleon as an evil dictator. One of the better ones perhaps, he did a lot of good stuff, but his disastrous foreign politics was an unmitigated disaster for France and the French.

He was completely ruthless, abandoning his troops in Egypt for example, or his comment that he had 25 000 troops a month to spend. The duc d'Enghien thing wasn't very benevolent, nor was his secret police actions.

So perhaps a mix of Caesar and Augustus, in the sense that his institutions lasted. And France, unlike the Roman Empire, wasn't a nightmarish slave state.

[HVC]

So perhaps a mix of Caesar and Augustus, in the sense that his institutions lasted. And France, unlike the Roman Empire, wasn't a nightmarish slave state.

  Haiti

[Threviel]

So perhaps a mix of Caesar and Augustus, in the sense that his institutions lasted. And France, unlike the Roman Empire, wasn't a nightmarish slave state.

  Haiti

  Oh yeah, there's also that, good example.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe in England.

I think as others say to degrees in Britain, the Low Countries, Italy and Germany. But even there there's a split - there are definite Napoleon fanboys and all the great Victorians had Napoleon busts because he was a "great man" making history. Most of his biographers are highly sympathetic - and they include very popular history writers like Andrewe Roberts. I think it's probably as much about your personality as anything else. I feel like romantics are broadly sympathetic (or join the Caesar-ist view). And I think you see that in Carlyle whose history of the revolution ends with Napoleon's whiff of grapeshot - but he then re-appears in his lectures on heroes, twinned with Cromwell.

I think a lot of it - like the short thing - is less British history and more the contemporary view of him - which was propaganda and for consumption of the troops that then entered a sort of folk memory. A bit like Hitler's only got one ball And I think that lingers far more than historians' views.

I've not read much about Napoleon but I found Simon Schama's book on the Dutch really interesting because there are these liberal revolutionary forces who first of all welcome France and are thrilled to set up their own Republic. And that gets narrower over time - particularly as it's an incredibly extractive regime, with narrowing legitimacy so more use of force needed to pay France. Then you have a King, Napoleon's brother, which leads to only the cynics really justifying the regime - but he became Louis the good, took the side of the Dutch and tried to stand up for their rights. He was removed and the Dutch kingdom were annexed. It is a really sad story of hope and belief, then creeping disillusionment and ultimate powerlessness to actually do anything while they lost their country.

Oh yeah, there's also that, good example.

And not just Haiti, he re-imposed slavery in other parts of the French Caribbean but there hadn't been a revolt there so it was possible. In Haiti it could be and was resisted.

Egypt?

I love Ridley Scott and think he's kind of right. He had this on a scen in which Napoleon fires at the pyramids: "I don't know if he did that, but it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt"

[crazy canuck]

And ingnores entirely that Nappy brought academics with him - it certainly plays to English prejudices that he went there to destroy what he found.

A number of years ago there was an exhibit in Seattle showcasing the work of those academics.  I think I had lunch with Camper after seeing the exhibit.

I miss Camper 

[Josephus]

Funny how napoleon got rehabilitated. Wasn't he like the hitler before hitler in Europe? The boogeyman name people used to describe bad guys/leaders. Or am I misremembering?

Not the way I remember things.  Military genius, short, tried to conquer all of Europe, fucked up.

Maybe he's treated differently in Canuckistan?

Much of Quebec's civil code is based on the Napoleonic code, so there's that.

[Oexmelin]

Not really.

It's based on the old Coutume de Paris, which is a source common to the current Quebec and French Codes civils. When the Quebec civil code got its modern form, in 1866, it followed the tendency exhibited by both British practices and Napoleonic codes to strengthen protections for private property, greater paternal authority and greater freedom to will your property to whomever you chose. In those matters, commentaries by French civil law jurists, who had then been working with the Napoleonic code, were used to shape Quebec's code provisions.

But one of the main French influences seems to have been Robert Joseph Pothier, who died in 1772, quite some time before the Napoleonic code.