‘Napoleon’ conquers the Paramount in Oakland

If you want silence, go sit in a closet.

True, there may be no talking in this movie. But there’s nothing silent, nothing dull and nothing short (it runs for 5½ hours with two intermissions and a dinner break) about “Napoleon,” the 1927 Abel Gance masterpiece considered the Holy Grail of silent film, now playing for four shows only at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland this weekend and next.

To see it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience — or four times, depending on your enthusiasm and endurance. This epic version, lovingly restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow, will likely not be seen again in its full format in the United States.

That’s because it’s not your run-of-the-pizza-parlor silent flick with tinny piano music and jerky sped-up motion. Presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the show will be seen as the late filmmaker Gance originally intended — as a major production involving specially designed projection booths and a massive 82-foot-wide, three-panel custom movie screen installed earlier this week in the Paramount to accommodate synchronized, three-camera effects.

What’s more, the on-screen drama is accompanied by a full orchestra — the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, under the baton of British composer Carl Davis, who wrote a rousing original score for this new version of the film.

Brownlow has dubbed the complex production “live cinema.”

“With Gance’s unusual techniques and the beautiful music — it’s simply riveting. There’s absolutely nothing like it,” said Anita Monga, the film festival’s artistic director, who was nearly giddy at Friday’s full dress rehearsal and press preview.

And with good reason. Bringing this to the public is a major triumph for the festival. It’s also a major financial layout, costing roughly $700,000 — more than the organization’s annual budget, said Executive Director Stacey Wisnia. Even with substantial ticket prices from $42 to $122, it’s likely to lose money.

“But we couldn’t pass up the chance,” Monga said. “We had been dreaming about this presentation for years. No one else was willing to do this. I guess we’re the little festival that could.”

Silent majority?

Festival executives are also banking on the recent success of the modern silent film, “The Artist,” hoping its Best Picture win at this year’s Academy Awards will provide a “salutary effect” for silent movie popularity. Though “Napoleon” is far from sold out, ticket sales have so far been good, said operations manager Lucia Piers. And while some folks have balked about the prices “for just a movie,” Monga points out that, if nothing else, it’s also five hours of original music — the equivalent of two back-to-back symphony concerts.

“Think how much you’d spend on that,” she said.

The setting in the 1931 art deco jewel-box Paramount couldn’t be better. As of Friday, technicians with headlamps, moving around in the dark aisles like so many coal miners, were still tweaking projectors and sound equipment as the orchestra tuned up. Soon there was a flicker of light and the great military commander’s anger and determination — even as a boy — screamed off the massive screen.

This movie experience is not so much about Napoleon. Well, yes, it is all about him, from his tormented boyhood in a boarding school through 1796 when a 26-year-old Bonaparte (played by Albert Dieudonné) leads the French army into Italy.

But the story of the film itself, its creation, its innovative techniques, its bumpy history and restoration is more fascinating. Gance used split screens, double exposures, a few splashes of color filters and of course the unique three-camera technique later called Polyvision.

Stunning effects

In the opening scene, as the boy Napoleon commands his first battle — a fierce snowball fight at school in which he displays his innately sly military tactics — Gance used quick cuts, even strapping a camera to a cameraman’s body to put the viewer in the middle of the fray in a jerky, dizzying motion younger viewers might think originated with “The Blair Witch Project” or “NYPD Blue.”

Sadly over the years, the film was treated as roughly as the young Napoleon. It premiered in Paris in 1927, but when it arrived in America, MGM Studios trimmed its nearly six-hour original bulk to an emaciated 75 minutes, possibly the reason for its initial bad reviews. It was subsequently chopped up even more, then pieced together in various formats. Many fragments were lost.

Then in the ’50s, a teenage Brownlow, entranced with silent films, managed to acquire portions of the film. He worked from 1969 to about 2000 finding lost segments and restoring the quality, now declaring it “as close to Gance’s original vision as possible.”

There are plans afoot to make this restored version available on digital in the future. In the meantime, the four Oakland showings are it for those who love silent films. And even those who think they don’t.

“When people hear ‘silent film,’ they usually roll their eyes,” Monga said. “But if we can get ’em in the door, they’re hooked.”