Introduction

NAPOLÉON not only offers a mythological account of its central hero but also an exploration of his human foibles. I want to demonstrate how the film counterbalances notions of Bonaparte as a ‘great man’ through the lengthy representation of his romance with Joséphine. This relationship, and the parallel story of Violine's unrequited love for Bonaparte, offer a fascinating and delightful set of scenes: poignant, ambivalent, and often very funny.

I also aim to challenge the notion that the ‘political melodrama’ of NAPOLÉON creates a simplistic depiction of ‘the nation as family’ (King 1984a: 162-3). By exploring the structure of dramatic narratives in other Gance films and their connections to the director's own biography, I will demonstrate a highly ambiguous attitude towards familial and romantic relationships. In NAPOLÉON, these issues are further complicated by the narrative restrictions engendered by the film's factual content: Gance’s melodrama must obey the impositions of history.

Incomplete families

Gance was the illegitimate child of Abel Flamant and Françoise Péréthon. Inheriting his father's first name and his mother's surname, he was raised by his maternal grandparents in the remote industrial town of Commentry. When Adolphe Gance began a relationship with Françoise, he adopted the three-year-old Abel and gave him his surname. Five years later, Gance’s mother and stepfather finally married and in 1898 this family moved from central France to the capital. Gance later obscured this provincial background and the Jewish ancestry of his biological father, claiming that he had a ‘carefree bourgeois childhood’ in a traditional Catholic household in Paris (Icart 1983: 11). He was also highly selective in accounts of his personal relationships: his first biographer was conveniently allowed to exaggerate the age of Gance's first wife and made no mention of his second or third marriages (Daria 1959). Considered in conjunction with the melodramatic tropes of his films, these issues assume more than just biographical importance.