The 4K Ultra HD Bazaar, volume 25

Watch Napoleon seen by Abel Gance in 4K Ultra HD (« the large version »), it's a bit like launching a military campaign from my couch: I leave confident, convinced to attend something grandiose (a confirmed intuition), and three hours later I realize that I still haven't crossed the Alps... At this point, I no longer watch a film, I endure a real epic. I am even surprised to see if Abel Gance did not slip, between two sequences, a discreet bivouac intended to test my resistance.

And then comes the time for the technical comparison, which I am following in the footsteps, such as a grognard who, after crossing a snowy collar, thinks that he can provide a last effort. So I switch from the battlefield to the lab. Is that reasonable after so many hours of visual campaigning? No doubt not, but I'm tangled with the seriousness of an archivist on alert. I confront the sources, I search the piqué, I examine the nuances, I evaluate the granulation, I gauge the luminous dynamics and I track the slightest variation of contrast, as if I were in charge of verifying the authenticity of a diplomatic treaty.

I then proceed to the editorial with the same concentration as Bonaparte leaning on a staff map, trying to put order in this long film campaign. On the one hand, the restoration (16 years of work), imperial, advances to the cadenced step, exhibiting each detail, ripped off in time; on the other, compression, much less conquering. Where the restored image loads as in Austerlitz, encoding sometimes seems to retreat. Obviously, some divisions were not aligned with the same plan of action. At this level of examination, I am no longer content to tell Napoleon: I unravel his strengths, his weaknesses and the technical compromises that arise between the two.

In the end, I realize that I dedicated a whole day to this monument of the mute... literally. A kind of immersive retreat, rhythmic by drums, horses, tricolor flags and a final triptych more effective than a double espresso. A total experience, almost initiatory, from which I emerge exhausted but strangely proud, as if I had won Austerlitz without leaving my living room.