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Originally Posted by Jonathan-S
It may be significant that play.com are calling it Napoleon Bonaparte, which is the title of Gance's own dubbed and heavily cut (140 minutes) 1934 edition of the 1927 film. I've never seen this sound version but a friend (who greatly admires the original) tells me it's a disaster, partly because Gance filmed linking scenes that did not match the grain of the film stock used in the 1920s.
This would perhaps explain how this release could circumvent the legal complications affecting the restoration.
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According to Kevin Brownlow's book, the biggest difference is that the silent footage runs too fast, a lot of the 1934 footage was shot with rear projection, and the silent footage had to be overdubbed. Gance unfortunately cut the original negative (the main one) to make the 1934 version... so the quality doesn't degrade from shot to shot.
It had a stereophonic soundtrack, so I wonder if it still exists.