Waterloo
Short description
Waterloo is an Italian-Soviet historical war drama about the end of Napoleon Bonaparte's rule and his final confrontation with the Duke of Wellington. In 1814, with allied armies marching through France, Napoleon's marshals press him to step down, and he accepts exile on the island of Elba. He escapes, however, and the French army turns back to him instead of arresting him. King Louis XVIII flees Paris, and the European powers once again mobilise, with Wellington given command of an allied force drawn from several nations. The two sides meet in Belgium in June 1815, where the fate of Europe is settled.
The film was directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, following his adaptation of War and Peace, and produced by Dino De Laurentiis for Mosfilm and Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica. Rod Steiger plays Napoleon, Christopher Plummer plays Wellington, Orson Welles plays Louis XVIII, and Dan O'Herlihy plays Marshal Ney, with Jack Hawkins and Virginia McKenna also in the cast.
Its large budget was not recovered at the box office. Audiences have rated it 7.3 out of 10 on IMDb and 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB, while it holds a critics' rating of 5.7 out of 10, a noticeable gap between professional and viewer opinion.
What's left behind the scenes
- Fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers were used in the mass scenes of the film, portraying infantry units.
- Rod Steiger went to the hospital before filming to find out why his side might hurt the way it hurt the legendary commander during an attack that occurred on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.
- In 1967, on the initiative of Semyon Budyonny, the Eleventh Separate Cavalry Guard Film Regiment was recreated. Soldiers serving in this regiment participated in the filming of battle scenes. They had to be able not only to ride horses, but also to jump onto them at a gallop, overcome obstacles, and perform various stunts. Naturally, those who had experience in equestrian schools and participated in races were more skilled in all of this.
- The filming of the movie was mainly done in Ukraine, Herzegovina, and Czechoslovakia.
- The crossing of the Seine River near Paris was filmed on the Chop River (Western Ukraine), on one of the banks of which sets depicting Paris were erected.
- In the scene depicting 'the dead field after Napoleon's battle,' horses were given alcohol and lay as if dead, cotton wool soaked in red paint was scattered everywhere, and mannequins depicting dead soldiers were lying around.
- For the film's author, lighting was of great importance, and often the same scene was shot in multiple takes until the director was satisfied with the result.
- The film's consultant was Army General Ivan Evgenievich Oslikovsky.
- Disagreements often arose between Bondarchuk and Oslikovsky, for example, when the director wanted to shoot a scene at two o'clock in the afternoon – the lighting was perfect, but the horses refused to cooperate – they knew it was feeding time and wouldn't move until they'd eaten. This irritated Bondarchuk, to which Oslikovsky responded with suffering: “I can command people, soldiers, but how do I command animals?” In addition, each squadron was assigned horses of a specific color; for example, the first squadron had bay horses, the second had dappled gray horses, the third had chestnut horses, and so on. And, depending on the changing lighting, Bondarchuk would order horses of a certain color to perform at a specific moment.
- After filming “Waterloo,” which lasted three months, the Cavalry Regiment also appeared in other films, including “The Chase” as members of the Black Hundreds.
- On the first day of filming in Rome, a scene of a ball given by the Duchess of Richmond in honor of the commanders of the allied armies was shot at the studio.
- Almost all location shooting took place in western Ukraine.
- A museum now stands on the site of the actual Battle of Waterloo. Therefore, the battle scenes were filmed near the village of Nizhne Solotvino in Transcarpathia, in a location with terrain very similar to the real battlefield.
- Sergei Bondarchuk was well acquainted with locations in Transcarpathia from filming the 1967-68 film 'War and Peace'.
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