Waterloo (1970) on Netflix
Forced to abdicate and exiled to Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte returns to France ten months later, and the army rallies to him. The Duke of Wellington moves to halt him at Waterloo.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.3/1014,892 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes30%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at his marshals' demand and is exiled to Elba with a thousand men. Ten months later he returns to France, and the French rally to him as he marches on Paris. Louis XVIII flees, and the powers of Europe declare war again. In Brussels, Wellington is warned at the Duchess of Richmond's ball that Napoleon is marching into Belgium to separate the British from the Prussians, and he decides to halt him at Waterloo.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Waterloo (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The battle scenes were shot on location in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, then in the Ukrainian SSR, with 17,000 authentically dressed extras and no special effects - still the largest body of costumed extras in any film.
- To recreate the battlefield the Soviets bulldozed away two hills, laid 8 kilometers of roads, transplanted 5,000 trees, sowed fields of rye, barley and wildflowers and reconstructed four historic buildings.
- The English actor Robert Rietti did the voices for 98 individual characters in the movie, including the voice-over for British actor Jack Hawkins as General Sir Thomas Picton, Hawkins having lost his voice due to throat cancer in 1965.
- John Huston had left the project by the time the Soviet connection brought in Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk, whose four-hour War and Peace won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1970 Academy Awards.
- The meagre box office results of Waterloo led to the cancellation of Stanley Kubrick's planned film biography of Napoleon, one of cinema's great unmade projects.
- New Zealand film director Peter Jackson said that Waterloo inspired his adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
