WATERLOO (1970)

Hog-heaven for Battlefield Re-Enactor mavens, considerably less interesting for anyone else.  At an unrecoverable cost, producer Dino De Laurentiis blamed his third-choice stars for the flop (neither Rod Steiger as Napoleon nor Christopher Plummer as Wellington a box-office draw), but the real problem is lack of rooting interest.  Can’t really blame hack scripter H.A.L. Craig (even with a C.V. of 10 duds, including AIRPORT '77!) or that grandest of mediocrities,  USSR filmmaker Sergey Bondarchuk, hired on the strength of the BORODINO segment of his 1966 WAR & PEACE.*  (Still tossing in occasional inappropriate stylistic/au courant editing tics & extreme-closeups out of the blue.)  But the all too obvious problem is that there’s no character or side to care about on the field of battle.  Especially tough since you can never quite follow the action in these things.  (Thank God for those kilted Scots.  So easy to identify!)   We do learn one thing: Don’t stand next to the Duke of Wellington!  On a positive side, all that death & destruction does make for a lot of pretty pictures, and someone (cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, a clever second-unit technician?) came up with a cool POV angle to capture officers charging into battle on horseback.   And as it’s unlikely to be equaled without loads of not-quite-convincing CGI in place of actual (in this case Russian) armies, there’s a definite must-see aspect to it.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The full 6+ hours of Bondarchuk’s WAR & PEACE is daunting, if only fitfully successful on any level beyond sheer girth (see below).  But its BORODINO segment (shortest of six at 1½ hours) does make for an interesting comparison.  But there, similarly faceless military action is buttressed by a wealth of characters we’ve spent hours building interest in.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At the David di Donatello Awards (think Italian Oscars®), this somehow tied for Best Pic with Vittorio De Sica’s GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS and Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST, achievements on a slightly higher plane.