Talk:The Emperor's New Clothes (2001 film)

message: Napoléon could NEVER have escaped from Saint Helena!  The movie contains numerous errors: Napoléon moves freely in 1821, he dyes suddenly, and so on.  Ian Holm may look quite similar to Napoléon I, but that does not help!  If you know the REAL circumstances around Napoléon’s death (as I do) it appears as pure pseudohistory!  A possible look-alike could not have left his home district or hometown without being taken for the person he was not!  (The image of Napoléon I was on the coins.)  Although escape plans were made those was probably to optimistic to work.  It would be suitable to have a paragraph saying that this could not have happened and more exactly why.
What did really happened?  When Napoléon delivered himself up to the Britons a few close friends and servants choose to follow him.  They where all sent to Saint Helena, a journey that took 69 days.  Most of them soon moved into Longwood House: a stable fast rebuilt into a home.  The first year the guard was minimal.  Napoléon could ride freely on the island and enjoyed working in the garden.  He also began to dictate his memoirs.  From 1816 and on he become more and more supervised.  Protesting against the supervision he began to spend more and more time indoors.  There he had nothing better to do than playing billiards and continue dictating.  From November 1818 he refused to get outdoors at all.  (He was only persuaded into getting outdoors once.  That was in October 1820 when he rode out for a picnic.)  The governor accepted that if an officer was let in every day.  After some time Napoléon tiered of that too.  During the last two years the only Britons let in where doctors.  By 1816 Napoléon had suffered from a chronically ill stomach for 14 years.  Now he began to get symptoms of an other disease: slow arsenic poisoning.  (This disease was not discovered until many decades later.)  Over the years he become increasingly ill.  Eventually he remained in his bed which was moved to the living room.  There he fell into coma and never woke up.  This was in May 1821.  The day after he died a post-mortem was performed by his doctors.  They wrongfully concluded that he had died from cancer.  Later he was buried in the garden.  In 1840 that grave was opened and his naturally mummified corpse was taken back to France where it was reburied in the Invalides.  This is as far as I know it.  I am not an historian just an ordinary sceptic.  If you want to know the truthfulness of any particular claim I recommend the International Napoleonic Society:
http://www.napoleonicsociety.com
They are devoted to the scientific study of Napoléon I and his time.
2006-11-12	  Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
I have changed my mind about the suitability of a disclaimer.  After all there is many pseudohistoric movies.  (A good comparison would be a movie based on the assumption that Elvis Presley is alive.  As if such a celebrity could keep hidden for thirty years without leaving any evidence...)  Normally I don’t want anyone to believe a look-alike story I consider impossible.  But when I thought about the cast and crew of the movie I realised that it is probably very hard and sometimes even fruitless to convince them.  Now I only want to make clear to the readers the events depicted in the movie did not happened since they could not have happened.
2007-03-28  Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
Lena, register an account with Wikipedia and incorporate that into the article. -Nodekeeper 12:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Errors

message: Is it noteworthy that the DVD box says that the film was based on the book "The Death of Napolean" (sic), rather than "The Death of Napoléon"? This is based on the Region 1 release. samwaltz (talk) 23:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Book title

message: I have added a link to the film, which Paramount made available on one of their YouTube channels. I am not savvy with external linking, and I don't believe this violates wikipedia's policies. Forgive me if I am mistaken, and for my poor edit. Please tidy it up, or remove it if it is an issue.
Great film. 174.198.12.132 (talk) 03:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Film available on Paramount's channel