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Has anyone written Napoleonic era sailing or, for that matter, land based adventures from the perspective of the French?
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Jun 26, 2014 03:20
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:37 |
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yaffle posted:I'll put in a word for Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan-Doyle, a view from the French side and very funny. And here's the second collection There's some turns towards seriousness in some of these that work really well - there's a lovely melancholy sequence where he watches troops heading off to the Crimean war (I think) before launching into one of his stories and the rout at Waterloo is wonderfully described. Are there any other historical series that take the French side of the Napoleonic era? There's the Gerard stories and Dumas's Sainte-Hermine books, but I can't think of anything modern.
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Jan 18, 2023 21:24
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PatMarshall posted:For some additional Napoleonic recs, check out Mr. Midshipman Easy, by Marryat, who actually served in the royal navy, the Charterhouse of Parma, really more of a shaggy dog adventure story, but with Napoleon in the background and a memorable description of Waterloo. Stendhal served with Napoleon as well. Finally, if you have some time, I highly recommend War and Peace, wonderful descriptions of the Austerlitz campaign, as well as everything else you could cram into a novel. Wonderful characters, who feel true to life, including all the short sightedness and foolishness that we always we regret in ourselves and others. Mosfilm's YouTube channel uploaded high quality versions of Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace quartet as part of glut of war flicks to coincide with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you can get past the propagandistic framing (which is kind of appropriate for a production greenlit out of the mentality of an arms race - look foul westerners at how our historical epic is so much more loving ginormous than your historical epics and despair!) it’s a compelling watch, filled with bold, strange and indulgent choices that pay off more of than not – though Bondarchuk’s decision to play Pierre Bezukhov never does. Part one is a bit patchy and you get the sense that they weren’t sure how to wrangle to the scale of the production quite yet. But parts two, three and four are great and the massive crowd sequences – courtesy of the Russian army offering up tens of thousands of soldiers to work as extras – near the end at the Battle of Borodino and during the sack of Moscow are some of the most extraordinary ever filmed.
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Jan 22, 2023 03:42
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