The Old Guarde?
In the movie the Old Guard looks like it was totally wiped out...However the Old Guard retreated far before such desamation, among it's troops.
shareWell, there were a few short cuts - the charge of the Union Brigade was particularly lame.
share"desamation"? I suspect that you meant decimation - which is, literally, the loss of one in ten (Latin "decimus" = ten) of any number of persons or things. Reporters, and even reputable historians, nowadays too often misuse decimate when they really mean to tell of losses greater than one in ten.
shareThe film was severely edited. A lot went in the final cut including quite a bit of the Old Guard. One character in the film called Sauret, played by Andrea Checci was an Old Guardsman who had a lover played by Bondarchuk's wife Irena Skobtseva, who followed him on campaign as a cantiniere. After the battle she searches the battlefield for Sauret's body. If you look really closely I am sure she is in the scene where Napoleon is carried shoulder high into the Tuilleries wearing a brown dress shouting Vive L'Emperour right in the foreground.
There are photos which show the Old Gaurd outside La Haye Sainte (which is on fire) which do not appear in the film.
Finally do you remember the scene where O'Connnor steals the little pig? Well making his way back to the British lines he bumps straight into Sauret on picket duty. He charms the startled Frenchman into letting him carry on his way, while he gives Sauret a plug of tobacco saying ' remember this face matey if we should meet tomorrow'.
Did you by any chance read the novelization? :) Got a little Waterloo collection at home thanks to an old 'girlfriend'... You really wonder how it would have looked. It's tragic that now, with 'directors cuts' coming out even for lame movies that we'll never see the mythic 4 hour Waterloo.
Tom516
I have read (and re read!!) Frederick E Smiths novelization, also an American movie mag called Movie Stories, I think, which printed a version of the film story which included scened not in the final cut including the Battle of Ligny. Quatre Bras does not fearture at all. The mag quotes the film very accurately so I think that we can take it that a longer version was available at the time.
Ligny featured Blucher's horse shot from under him and explains why he was rubbing his chest in his first appearance. There was also the meeting between Wellington and Blucher after the battle, plus a few more lines given to Napoleon during the battle.
I have to disagree with the later postings about the four hour version I still believe there was a two and a half hour - or thereabouts - version which was scored and dubbed. I also believe that they were cutting the film to its present length until just before the premiere.
Well evidently there was a truckload of footage that was junked... quite sad really. I always felt that the Quatres Bras/Ligny segments seemed truncated. Still they did have to save enough time for Waterloo. My school library had Ugo Pericoli's (the costume designer) Uniforms of Waterloo. Not to be missed either for the Waterloo Fanatic ;)
Tom516
GOD! man...if your so angry that I miss spelled that, then look at all the other people who spell like there from the bayous! by the way THE ROMANS ARE DEAD! Who cares....sorry mate.
shareDecimation can be used even if you dont lose 1 in 10.And I agree..the charge of Union Brigade was very lame..but again,the movie was severly edited.Plus I think I saw some bolt action rifles used by the French while they would only have had muzzel loading muskets
shareErm...go to Rome and you'll find a couple of million live Romans
And Latin is the official language of the Vatican city state, so I imagine they care
But yeah, having a go at spelling mistakes on an internet message board is a bit silly