Youssef Chahine, the rare Egyptian filmmaker with an international reputation (this film in competition at Cannes), had an unusually large budget for this French/Egyptian production on Napoleon Bonaparte’s Cairo campaign, the invasion a major fiasco that Nappy ‘sold’ as a great success. Even then, P.R. able to manipulate world opinion. The film is big, and looks it, with the clean saturated colors of a Hollywood 1960s epic, its pacing controlled by alternating personal stories of the locals with big public gestures of ingratiation or blunt force by the French military. A jarring look at the means & ends of Bonaparte’s political cynicism. It opens daringly with an interrupted assignation for a pair of young lovers (a literal roll in the hay) as public excitement builds upon spotting the French Fleet sailing in. There’s a mixed reception, street fighting giving way to capitulation & collaboration before failed compromise leads back to street battles. As for Napoleon, when not practicing pithy phrases to ‘spontaneously’ use, he’s open to Egyptian customs, religious preferences and local-governance . . . but only on his terms. That’s avant-garde director Patrice Chéreau as Bonaparte, but the main character is his close, but argumentative aide Michel Piccoli as Caffarelli, an intellectual with a limp and a yen for the three handsome sons of a local baker who only wants to make bread for anyone with money to buy. Needless to say, this is going to end badly, but while it’s sometimes confusing, it’s always fascinating.
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