L'Otage de l'Europe (1989)
Directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Film Review

With its appropriately austere setting, this film provides a sombre portrait of Napoléon's last few years during his exile on St Helena.  Roland Blanche plays the ageing Bonaparte with great force and humanity, making his character much more sympathetic than his rival, the bumbling, self-pitying Hudson Lowe.

Whilst the film is generally well made, it is a cold lumbering affair, dragging particularly towards the end.  It appears that there is scarcely enough material for a film of this length (over two hours), and some weak, underdeveloped characterisation emphasises this painfully. Ultimately, the film feels as bleak and empty as its island setting, and the viewer's understanding of Napoléon is scarcely advanced.

Film Synopsis

After his humiliating defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the Emperor Napoléon has no choice but to give himself up and surrender himself to the mercy of the British.  To guard against the possibility any future resurgence of French republicanism, Napoléon is stripped of his title and his assets and is sent to live out the rest of his days on St Helena, a remote little island more than a thousand miles off the coast of West Africa.  His new home is Longwood House, a poorly maintained building where he is to be closely guarded by the British governor Hudson Lowe.

Impressed neither by Napoléon's character nor his personal history, Lowe regards him as a figure of contempt.  He has one objective - to break down his prisoner's morale, to crush his will to live and thereby hasten his demise.  Over the five long and agonising years that follow, the former emperor will put up a fierce resistance, sustained not only by his faith in his own powers, but also by his unremitting hatred of the English.  In Hudson Lowe he has an admirable adversary - cunning and ruthless to a fault.  Napoléon is about to fight his final battle, and he will remain defiant right until the end...