Napoleon

Napoleon (Napoléon, 1927) is Abel Gance's monumental silent epic you can watch online on iFILM. Clocking in at over five hours, it follows Bonaparte from his Corsican schooldays through the French Revolution and into his first Italian campaign of 1797. Albert Dieudonné plays Napoleon with a ferocity that still reads across a century of cinema.

Gance treated the camera like a weapon. He strapped it to horses, swung it on pendulums, and intercut a real storm at sea with the political chaos of the Directoire. For the finale he invented Polyvision — simultaneous projection across three screens — decades before widescreen became standard. Édmond van Daële plays a chilling Robespierre; Antonin Artaud, the poet and playwright, appears as Marat.

After decades in near-total obscurity, historian Kevin Brownlow spent years assembling a restored print; its 1981 Royal Albert Hall premiere, with a live orchestra, ended in a standing ovation. The film now sits alongside Intolerance and Battleship Potemkin as one of silent cinema's defining achievements. Stream Napoleon (1927) online on iFILM.