Trivia / Napoléon (1955)

• Acting for Two: Gilbert Bokanowski portrayed both King Louis XVI and a merchant.
• All-Star Cast: Take a big name of mid-1950s French acting, and there was a chance that person was in this movie (looking at the poster alone, there's three columns of names above the title). For the French cast alone there was Daniel Gélin, Raymond Pellegrin, Michèle Morgan (as Joséphine de Beauharnais), Sacha Guitry himself, Jeanne Boitel, Pierre Brasseur, Danielle Darrieux, Jacques Dumesnil, Jean Chevrier, Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, a rising Yves Montand, singer Patachou (real name Henriette Ragon), Micheline Presle, Serge Reggiani, Noël Roquevert, Henri Vidal... and some foreign additions such as Erich von Stroheim and Orson Welles.
• California Doubling:
  • The bridge of Lorey (Meurthe-et-Moselle, France) was used as that of Arcole, Italy, for the eponymous 1796 battle.
  • The 1807 Tilsit Meeting was filmed at the Hostellerie du Passeur in Herblay-sur-Seine, France, instead of the actual Tilsit in then-East Prussia (nowadays' Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia).
• Dawson Casting: The film has this and the inverse with the titular character. 33 year old Daniel Gélin plays Napoleon from his mid-teens to his early 30s, at which point 29-year-old Raymond Pellegrin took over, that is, from Napoleon's 30s to his death in his 50s.
• Descended Creator: Sacha Guitry directed the duology and starred as Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.
• Role Reprise:
  • Sacha Guitry had played Talleyrand (his favorite historical character) before this film, in 1948's Le Diable boiteux.
  • Raymond Pellegrin would also play Napoleon again in 1960, in an episode of La Caméra explore le temps dealing with his time on the isle of Saint Helena.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • On this wiki alone there's the 1927 Abel Gance film with Albert Dieudonné, the 2002 miniseries with Christian Clavier and the 2023 Ridley Scott film with Joaquin Phoenix. The acute accent on the "e" of "Napoléon" is for French (or heavily French) productions.
  • For a non-Bonaparte related example, there's 1995's Napoleon.
• Written by Cast Member: Sacha Guitry directed, played in and wrote the duology.

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