Director Ridley Scott’s highly-anticipated epic historical drama film, Napoleon, is officially out. The film, which is based on the true story of Napoleon Bonaparte, depicts the French leader’s rise to power as well as his relationship with Empress Joséphine. Scott’s Napoleon was shot in just 62 days and this one thing about the stunt crew on the sets baffled the director.
The director recently explained the process of filming The Battle of Austerlitz and how the stunt crew was enjoying the process of filming tough stunts. The film has been scrutinized by historians for its factual errors, however, Scott is not affected by them because he believes “everybody has an opinion about what really happened.”
Ridley Scott was left baffled as Napoleon‘s stunt crew enjoyed filming dangerous scenes
In order to depict The Battle of Austerlitz in 2023’s Napoleon, director Ridley Scott made all sorts of arrangements to make it look authentic. To film the scene where Napoleon orders his French gunners to fire cannons at the frozen lake to send his retreating enemies into the lake below, a 30-by-40-meter hole in the ground was dug at the Abingdon Airfield.
The underwater scenes were filmed in a tank on a soundstage at nearby Pinewood Studios. The director revealed that they put stunt crew in the water with the horses and they enjoyed filming those dangerous sequences (via Vulture),
“For their safety, you can only put two horses in the tank at a time but we put the men falling in there as well, so they were trying to avoid the horses and getting clobbered by their hooves. They were all stunt guys. It was absolutely baffling to me, but they loved it.”
The use of cannons in the film is quite extensive, mainly because it was one of Napoleon’s favorite pieces of artillery. Scott revealed that no live cannonballs were fired. The cannons were props that fired blanks and were made of carbon fiber instead of steel.
Also read: Ridley Scott on French Critics Hating on Napoleon: “The French don’t even like themselves”
Ridley Scott is not affected by the negativity received by Napoleon
After Napoleon‘s premiere at Salle Pleyel in Paris, the film received mixed reviews from the critics but Ridley Scott shut them down in an interview with BBC,
“The French don’t even like themselves. The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”
The film was also criticized for its historical inaccuracies but Scott isn’t affected by it at all, in fact, the director questioned the historians, claiming that there are 10,000 books about Napoleon and no one can confirm what actually happened. Napoleon has been released in theatres in the United States and the United Kingdom on November 22, 2023.
