Waterloo

Visually impressive, but a rather silly attempt to explain Napoleon, tracing his career from exile in Elba, through resurgence to power, to his defeat by Wellington at Waterloo. The main problem seems to lie in Bondarchuk's reliance on eye-catching gimmickry, and in his indecision as to whether to make a spectacular epic about nations at war, or an intimate portrayal of Bonaparte as a person. The early scenes, with less action, suffer most from this fault, although the whole thing is also blighted by Steiger's eccentrically mannered performance.