"After the first screening of the restored Napoleon, Abel Gance’s beleagured 1927 masterwork, at the Empire Leicester Square, London, on November 30th, 1980, the director of the British Film Institute Anthony Smith was quoted as saying “After Sunday the world will be divided into those who have seen Napoleon and those who haven’t.” The world of the haves over the have-nots expanded to the US the following year when Francis Ford Coppola famously brought Napoleon to Radio City Music Hall to be performed with his father’s score, but in the intervening three decades the film has not been seen again in the US. Come March 24th, however, thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the world will once again be divided between those who have and those who haven’t when the film returns to the US for four screenings of Kevin Brownlow’s complete restoration—accompanied by Carl Davis’s score and a full orchestra—in Oakland’s extravagant Art Deco movie palace the Paramount Theatre, which, like Napoleon itself, has to be seen to be believed."
The anticipation keeps building up! Less than a month away before I become one of the haves.
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