michaelstep2004 On June 18, 1815, all the promise of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were snuffed out in a single day. Since then, we in the West have been ruled almost always by cynical oligarchs focused on greed and the privileges of the elite. We have played recklessly with nationalism,experimented cruelly with arid socialism, and cynically dabbled in democracy. We have come close to self destruction, and may yet accomplish that deed. Sadly, that could all have been avoided except for the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's stomach cramps.Despite two centuries of (non-French) propaganda about his power-corrupted self-centeredness, Napoleon was a true visionary revolutionary with an extremely advanced notion of European political, social and economic relationships. Had his dream of a single Western polity come into being after 1815, the world would have suffered much, much less from fraternal and genocidal conflicts in the past century. The conventional wisdom of the victors -- that Waterloo was the last scene of a heroic struggle of freedom loving peoples to defeat French tyranny -- tries to conceal the fact that all the victors actually did was reimpose the tyranny of the ancien regime.So...thank you, England, and William Pitt, Jr. Thank you Prussia, Stein, Hardenberg and Queen Louise. Thank you Austria, Kaiser Franz (the father in law of Napoleon) and Metternich. And thank you Russia and Alexander. Through your work in destroying Napoleon and the promise of the Enlightenment we have gotten to enjoy:Two World Wars; Vicious natonalism on both left and right; Hitler and StalinThe British officers in this movie are so ridiculous -- all of them are gorgeous and perfectly groomed aristocrats with not a hair out of place, not an ugly, inbred throwback in evidence -- though of course there were plenty of those. Plummer's portrayal of Wellington is a decent recreation of England's greatest commander. The music at the Countess of Richmond's ball, a beautifully shot sequence, is all wrong -- Vienna 1890, not Brussels 1815. But it's a lovely extended scene.The Prussians are exactly what you would expect with a Russian director -- mindless proto-Nazis.The French, of course, are very brave, and very foolish. They die noisily, but magnificently.Rod Steiger is not the actor one would want to play Napoleon, despite superficial resemblances from several angles. Yes, Napoleon got a bit chubby in later years, but not double-chinned. And where is the handsomeness, the charisma, the EYES that flashed and commanded? Not here. Steiger blusters and shouts instead. And the script's depiction of Napoleon's supposedly tortured inner thoughts is dubious at best.The Battle of Waterloo, which takes up the last third of the movie, is utterly stupendous, even better than director Bondarchuk's Battle of Borodino in his Russian epic, War and Peace (1968). Nowadays, this would have been done using CGI, and wouldn't have been half as thrilling.

eamonnoriordan-273-283716 I saw this movie on its release in 1970 and was hugely impressed by all aspects of how it recreated the battle of Waterloo and how close it stuck to the original facts , its use of the original statements of Napoleon and Wellington and of course the thrilling cavalry charges which illustrated the shock and awe that someone facing such a charge must have felt .A few years later I spent a week on the site of the battlefield staying in a hotel just behind Wellington's tree from where he conducted most of the battle . During this time I walked every area of the battle , visited Hugomont and saw the evocative graves of the handful of french soldiers who managed to get over the walls and who were buried where they fell . The battle field has been preserved intact and one is struck by the closeness and intimacy of the conflict where Napoleon and Wellington stood on opposite ridges and were visible to each other at all times during the battle .As I am from Ireland I found it interesting to discover that the horses of Napoleon ( called Marengo ) and Wellington ( Copenhagen ) at Waterloo were bred in Co. Wexford at a place called Wellington Bridge and that in fact the two horses were half brothers ! I watched the DVD for the first time in 40 years last night and was struck by two things , how close the movie was to the actual topography of the real Waterloo , La Haye Sainte etc. and how miscast Christopher Plummer was .I admire Plummer and have followed his career but now in hindsight I feel he was too young for the part of Wellington particularly against such a strong force that was Rod Steiger's Napoleon . Plummer came across as effete and campy and his main forte seemed to be confined to delivering the witty quips and put downs used by Wellington which in no way did justice to the real Wellington whereas in contrast Steiger nailed the role of Napoleon .In fact I feel that Plummer could now play Wellington and do him justice much better at his present age ! I also feel that the over dramatic use of the display of arrayed cannon when the Old Guard was invited to surrender was unnecessary and completely over the top as the moment itself was both pitiful and glorious enough without embellishment . The simple French monument on the field of Waterloo today to the Old Guard is by far the most simple and moving of all the battle field's many monuments .Those criticisms aside I enjoyed the movie and would watch it again , it has aged well and if you want to know about ancient battles then this is the best battle movie of all time .

Jakester The film has terrible, near-fatal flaws, but if you love history you should watch it. Rod Steiger doesn't work remotely as Napoleon for me, I wouldn't follow this guy to cross the street, much less into battle. Still, any depiction of Napoleon is at least somewhat interesting, and worth watching. (I wonder if they could have gotten Brando for the role if they had tried. He needed the work. He was supposedly box office poison at the time, this was just before The Godfather. Maybe he was shooting Burn!, I don't know.) Christopher Plummer is very good as Wellington, somewhat one-dimensional, but capturing the essential thing - the steely confidence of the British aristocrat/warrior of the early 19th century. The best film portrayal of Wellington ever.For me, use of sound is 25 percent of a film, and the sound in this film is not good - not only the bad dubbing but the tin-eared, non-inspiring, non-moving use of music (except for the ball sequence). Ruinous, IMO. My favorite moment in the film is when Napoleon rides his white horse onto the field and Wellington watches from a distance through a telescope - watches a faint blur of glory racing along. I get the feeling that the actual moment, in 1815, must have been very much like this. But the sequence is hurt by the fact that the close-up of Steiger is staged, he's not really riding a horse, he apparently is riding some sort of mechanical contraption that is meant to mimic a horse's movements but really doesn't, and is filmed from the chest up. This contraption is used repeatedly in the movie. I realize the need for it - it allows close-ups of good actors who may not be good on horseback, and/or it allows for a steady shot before the invention of the Steadicam - but I file it under "seemed like a good idea at the time."The scenes of actual combat are OK, no better than that. If you want really good Napoleonic battle sequences see the Soviet version of War and Peace, also directed by Bondarchuk. He also does a ball sequence in that film that's excellent. He's also better at the small, intimate moments, as with Natasha's dance in the cabin. Dunno what happened to the guy in the two years between War and Peace and Waterloo. The single most interesting thing about this movie is that its box office failure caused Stanley Kubrick to lose his backing for a Napoleon film. What a tragedy. But then, as Napoleon well knew, the vagaries of fate can shatter the best-laid plans.

TerryDaniel My third viewing of Waterloo was probably the best viewing of the film I had had.It appears this film gets slightly better every time it is seen.This really was one of the last huge battle epics that came from the 60's and early 70's. Rod Steiger plays Napoleon pretty well but it goes from French to English to American apart from that good portrayal of the trumped up little Frenchmen. The director Sergie Bondarchuk had filmed a similar film to this a year before called War and Peace.I see this as an unofficial sequel to War and Peace as it battles and ball room dances are similar in style. I was very happy to see Spaghetti Western legend in this film Gianni Garko who stared as Sartana the gambling gun slinger in countless films.Al so spotted in this film was Coronation Streets Fred Elliot but was refrained from saying "I want meat,I say I want meat.This film time is comfortable at roughly around 2 hours.A great score as well by Nino Rota who previously had scored Visconti's "The Leopard and later went on to score "The Godfather". Orson Welles is all so in this film for about film minutes if you don't know who he is well his that morbidly obese character who plays Louis XVIII with some what of a British accent. I would love to have seen this film on the big screen i only hope one day it comes out in some poky art house cinema.