Paris
France’s greatest icon, Napoleon, is riding a wave of renewed popularity this fall with a rash of biographies and films. His life is the subject of a theater extravaganza, with a cast of 150, that opened last month to rave reviews. It’s also the subject of the most expensive program ever made for French television: an eight-part miniseries starring Christian Clavier as Bonaparte and Isabella Rossellini as his wife Josephine; Gerard Depardieu and John Malkovich play supporting roles. Not everyone in Europe is equally thrilled, though—Italian commentators have denounced the series as glorifying Napoleon’s Italian campaign, which they said would today be classified as a war crime. The emperor, who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century, laid waste to Italy and burned countless Italian villages.
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