The September 29, 1969, Napoleon script can be studied as an identifiable narrative proposal. Its scenes and transitions describe a planned film, not a work that was ever made.
A dated version and a life too long to show in full
The cover of the text consulted identifies Stanley Kubrick as its author and bears the date September 29, 1969. The documentary edition prepared by Alison Castle reproduces that version in facsimile. Identifying it makes it possible to discuss a specific structure without indiscriminately combining treatments, notes, and later proposals. The project continued to generate ideas, so a reading of the dated text should not be presented as an inventory of every form Kubrick considered.
The written narrative covers childhood, education, rise, exercise of power, defeat, and exile. This breadth raises a problem of selection rather than comprehensiveness. No narrative of limited duration can give equal attention to every year or event. Choosing which moments become scenes and which are summarized establishes an interpretation of the subject’s life. Biographical continuity does not eliminate that selection; changes in pace and scale make it visible.
The project’s historical research provided a much broader context than could fit into a film. Its relationship to the script is not a matter of transferring one entry after another. A scene needs actions, positions, and information distributed between characters and viewers. The writing reorganizes documentary material to meet those needs, and an ellipsis can matter as much as a developed episode if it changes what the audience knows upon reaching the next scene.
The study of adaptation and the transformation of existing material helps clarify that process. A biography, a letter, and a conversation between characters do not offer the same point of view. Turning documentation into action requires deciding who knows a fact, when they express it, and what effect it has on someone else. A script can draw on historical sources and still be a dramatic construction, without thereby becoming a neutral transcript of the past.
Narrating a life and showing someone trying to direct it
The text distinguishes between the narrator’s interventions, words attributed to Napoleon, and situations described for the camera. This distribution makes it possible to convey information that the protagonist does not express in an immediate conversation. It also creates an opportunity to compare what someone says about themselves with the context provided by the narration. The explanatory voice should not automatically be mistaken for the character’s private perspective or, in every detail, the director’s personal opinion.
The planned maps introduce another scale of information. A conversation can make an individual decision perceptible; a spatial representation can relate it to distances, territories, and movements that cannot fit inside a room. The shift is not merely decorative. It organizes a relationship between immediate experience and historical scope. Its effectiveness on screen would have depended on duration, design, and editing—elements the document can propose without resolving them as a finished film.
The question of narrators and voice-over is especially useful for reading this alternation. A voice can condense time, introduce context, or foreshadow a consequence. Each function changes the viewer’s relationship to the scene. Knowing an outcome in advance can shift attention from surprise to how that outcome is reached. Dramatic interest does not necessarily disappear when the ending is known; it can shift to decisions, contradictions, and limits of understanding.
The written structure thus invites a comparison between the ability to command and the ability to know. The protagonist can issue orders without controlling all their consequences, and the narrative can offer a broader perspective than that of those acting within an episode. This is a reading of the narrative organization, not a claim that the script provides a sufficient explanation of every historical process it represents.
Private bonds within a public representation of power
The planned sequence of Josephine’s divorce places an intimate decision in a ceremony involving dynastic considerations and public formalities. The contrast makes it possible to examine how a personal bond becomes a matter of governance. Its dramatic interest is not limited to deciding whether a statement is sincere. The words must work before others and within an institution, while the situation retains consequences for those who shared the relationship.
From this perspective, power and its institutions do not appear only on the battlefield. They also shape who speaks, what justifications can be offered, and how a decision is presented to those expected to accept it. The difference between personal emotion and a public explanation does not require treating every statement as false. It helps us recognize that speaking from a position of authority imposes forms and audiences that differ from those of a private conversation.
The final section narrows the character’s sphere of action and turns attention back to relationships and memories. This contraction can be read in contrast with the earlier breadth: changing the conditions of space and dialogue transforms the reach of authority. This reading is grounded in the written structure, not in an imagined performance. We do not know the voices, gestures, or response times the performers would have brought to those situations during filming.
That is why the script can be analyzed on its own terms without requiring a critique of a nonexistent film. We can study its selection, its relationship between information and scene, and the tensions it proposes between public and private life. We cannot declare how each shot would have worked or what changes Kubrick might have made while filming or editing. The 1969 version preserves specific narrative decisions; recognizing its possibilities does not require treating actions still written as proposals as finished audiovisual results.
References: Stanley Kubrick, Napoleon, script dated September 29, 1969, English-language text. Eva-Maria Magel, “The Best Movie (N)ever Made: Stanley Kubrick’s Failed Napoleon Project,” Stanley Kubrick exhibition catalog, pp. 156–159. Rijksmuseum Research Library, bibliographic record for Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, edited by Alison Castle, identifying the script facsimile.
View all articles in Kubrick’s Napoleon: Development of an Unmade Project