A massive six-hour biopic of Napoleon, tracing his career from his
schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign), his
flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is
intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant
invasion of Italy in 1797 (the film stops there because it was intended to be
part one of six, but director Abel Gance never raised the money to make the
other five). The film`s legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of
techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-
minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with
complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three
screens.