Ridley Scott really wants us to think Napoleon was hot
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Napoleon Bonaparte was not short. Most contemporary sources put him at about 5-foot-6, typical of the average 19th-century Frenchman. He earned that apocryphal diminutive reputation from an English newspaper cartoonist named James Gillray at the dawn of the Napoleonic Wars. Gillray portrayed the emperor as a stormy, teensy-tiny toddler—flipping tables, stomping his feet—a likeness that swiftly became canonized across the world.
All of this is to say that the dimensions of Joaquin Phoenix (5-foot-8) fit neatly into a historically authentic Bonapartian silhouette, which is surely why Ridley Scott tapped him to play the leading man in the forthcoming epic Napoleon. What is less clear is whether or not Napoleon possessed the striking movie-star good looks—and almost uncanny facial symmetry—of someone like Phoenix. Scott certainly seems intent on making us think so. The first trailer for the film was released on Monday, giving us an initial taste of Joaquin in full Grande Armée regalia. I watched it over and over again, stuck on the same burning question. “Wait a minute, am I supposed to think that Napoleon was hot?”
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Much of the dramatic tension in Scott’s film centers around Napoleon’s careening, volatile enchantment with his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais—played here by another stunning movie star, Vanessa Kirby. Interstitial text flashes across the trailer, announcing that we will come in close contact with three flavors of Napoleon: the Tyrant, the Emperor, and, yes, the Lover. That last bit is accompanied by quick cuts of the general’s candlelit bedchamber, where he tosses his bicorn to the ground and hungrily necks his beloved in what seems to be the beginning of a sex scene. It’s clear that Ridley Scott is trying to make a romance here, blending tactical counter-flanking maneuvers and sensuous ballroom flirtations into a chimerical box-office smash. (I think it is fair to call it Barbie for boys.) Phoenix is more than capable of playing the romantic lead, but is there any truth to this depiction of Napoleon as a Hot Slut? Did the man from Corsica really have that much sex appeal beyond wanton, vainglorious power? The answer is more complicated than you think.
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“From his adolescence until about age 27, in 1796, most people considered him fairly unattractive,” said David A. Bell, a historian at Princeton who has written a biography about Napoleon, and who agreed to respond to my facile questions. “Many described him as scrawny, sallow-skinned, greasy-haired, messy.”
Bell’s characterization lines up with many of the firsthand accounts of Napoleon’s presentation. The man was not exactly an Adonis, which often confused the conquered Europeans in his wake who expected some sort of sumptuous, Alexander the Great–esque runway-model-cum-warrior when he finally showed his face. A Russian major named Baron von Lowerstern who met Napoleon personally in 1809 noted that he “did not make the impression on me that I anticipated,” and said that he found the emperor to be “more corpulent than he is usually portrayed,” with a gait that was “hardly gracious, his manner lacking honor.” (Again, it’s always difficult to know how much anyone can read into these foreign depictions of Napoleon, given how many enemies he made during his brief dominion over Europe.)
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That aside, Bell asserts that Napoleon experienced something of a glow-up after meeting and marrying Josephine (and accruing an ungodly amount of wealth and influence). “He cleaned up pretty good,” said Bell. “This is when you get some of the great paintings, and even allowing for artistic license, it’s clear he was at least conventionally attractive.” You see where Bell is coming from when you pore through the gallery. The classic Bonaparte at the Pont d’Arcole, rendered by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1796 when Napoleon was 27 years old, captures the emperor with full lips, shaggy hair, and a ridiculously sharp jawline. There’s still a scent of that limp sallowness in the air, but—with Gros’ brushstrokes—it’s filtered through a locus of imperial confidence; an incarnation of Bonaparte who would have absolutely no trouble on the prowl in Bushwick. Alexander Mikaberidze, another Bonapartian expert at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, fully agrees with Bell, and uses language for Napoleon’s looks that is typically reserved for most leather-bound post-punk frontmen.
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“Many contemporaries remarked about his piercing blue-grayish eyes and stern look,” he said. “Those who knew Napoleon often remarked, however, that his portraits never fully captured him. Betsy Balcombe, who saw Napoleon on St. Helena Island, commented that ‘The portraits of him give a good general idea of his features; but his smile, and the expression of his eye, could not be transmitted to canvas, and these constituted Napoleon’s chief charm.’ ”
It should also be mentioned that, according to Mikaberidze, Napoleon was not exactly a convivial mensch, or an awesome hang. Sure, he had a sharp wit in the drawing room—he was an expert diplomat on top of a genius strategic mind—but moments of levity were reportedly brief, and undermined by a roiling intensity at the pit of his soul. In other words, Napoleon wasn’t blessed with the furtive je ne sais quoi that elevates human beings into progressively more celestial tiers of hotness, á la Adam Driver, Jeff Goldblum, or Jay-Z. “I would not call him a charming conversationalist,” added Mikaberidze. “But he had tremendous energy and self-discipline, was action-oriented, and possessed an innate drive to achieve and make things done.”
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This was compounded by the fact that when Napoleon washed up on the shores of Elba—and began to plot his blunder-ridden, past-prime Waterloo campaign—his own body began to fall into disrepair. Simply put, Napoleon did not age gracefully. When it ended, it ended badly. “After age 40, he went downhill as the strain of war took its toll,” said Bell. “He started losing his hair, grew a paunch, and had pouches develop under his eyes.” Bonaparte didn’t live much longer after his own esteemed visage fractured. In 1821, at only 51 years of age, he died in exile of stomach cancer.
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For what it’s worth, Joaquin Phoenix is 48, and he’s been asked to portray the whole scope of Napoleon’s biography—wunderkind, emperor, and ousted despot—which is sure to upset some of the more historically-minded audiences. “It will be pretty unconvincing,” said Bell, who did not mince words about his hopes for the film. “It doesn’t look like they’re trying to CGI reverse-age him like Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones.”
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Given all this, I’m frankly baffled that Scott has decided to center a Napoleon biopic around his love life, presenting him as an autocrat of Caligulan properties. It’s true that the man had copious mistresses, but surely no more than the average regency playboy. Every book I’ve ever read about the man is far more interested in his wartime prowess than his relationship with Joséphine, which I imagine will make this Napoleon something of a textual outlier. I guess it’s cool that Ridley Scott found some way to make his biopic stand out.
Regardless, after consulting the experts, I do think that Phoenix is, at the very least, a loose approximation of Napoleonic handsomeness—for a certain segment of his life, at least. Stern looks? Steely eyes? A fiery, almost perturbing intensity that seems to allure and repel at the exact same time? Phoenix has been making hay with that archetype throughout his entire career. If Napoleon must be a romantic lead, then nobody in Hollywood is better equipped to nail his distinct brand of sexual intrigue. Who knows? Maybe 200 years ago, Phoenix would have been marching on Austerlitz right alongside him.
Source: Slate
