Imperial Venus

Film is one source where Romance can be studied and emulated. I will start regularly posting here movies which I feel are the epitome of Romance. The honored first will be Imperial Venus which is a Franco-Italian endeavor produced in 1963. Its' original name is Venere Imperiale, and on this Italian link some photos and short information about the film are presented.

Imperial Venus starred Gina Lollobridgida (the second in the pair of Italian bombshells the other of whom was Sophia Loren) and Stephen Boyd, an Irish actor who is best remembered as Massala in the Academy Award winning Biblical epic Ben Hur. Imperial Venus is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger and favorite sister Pauline. Pauline was one the great beauties of her day. She was also greatly known for her love affairs and extravagant, nonconformist behavior. Napoleon loved her dearly, but he like many men of his generation and culture believed in a double standard. He could conduct affairs, but he was scandalized by his sister's behavior and tried to get her to tone down and stop making so much noise.

Pauline was married twice. Being the rebel, she scandalized her second husband Camillo Borghese , an Italian prince, and society by having two nearly nude statues of herself made by the sculptor Antonio Canova.

Canova's stature of Pauline as Venus Victrix (Venus the Conqueror)

Unlike the other hanger-ons around Napoleon during his glory days which included his other brothers and sisters, Pauline turned out to be one of the few who stood by Napoleon after his downfall. She even stayed with him during his first exile on the island of Elba and helped to run his court there. Pauline died four years after Napoleon at the age of 44 of cancer, the same disease that carried him away. She was a mass of contradictions: beautiful, erotic, rebellious, selfish, generous, unfaithful, child-like, flamboyant, and loyal. She was a true Romantic.

Gina Lollobridgida plays Pauline in Imperial Venus. The movie is not an excellent film, but it has some unique moments and dialogue. The costuming is beautiful and authentic. The film begins in Marseille, France where Pauline and her family are living as poor Corsican exiles. Napoleon Bonaparte and his family were not French, but Corsicans whose first language was Italian. Pauline is already showing her rebellious, adventurous streak as a teenager which a mature Lollobrigida plays and tries hard to pull off. But enter Napoleon who already at 25 is a general in the French army. He has plans for France AND his entire family even though he is not the eldest. He usurps his elder brother Joseph's role as head of the family. A man whom Pauline wants to marry is deemed not good enough by Napoleon for his sister who must rise up along with the rest of the family to create the dynasty which Napoleon already envisions. The film stops just before Napoleon gets ready to go into his first exile on Elba. The final scene of the movie shows Pauline holding and comforting her elder brother, the once great Emperor of the French and master of Europe.

Imperial Venus was created in response to French and Italian audiences who viewed with distaste the New Wave movement in film in France and of the time. These people obviously had a Romantic spirit and did not really care for excessive, stark, and bleak realism. They loved refinement and escape, like myself.

Though not a Romantic masterpiece, Imperial Venus is escapism on a good level. I was able to locate it on Google Video last year and paid $3.99 to download it. I looked for it yesterday, but I could not find it. I loved the movie's score so much that I bought the soundtrack from Amazon. Click on this link to listen to excepts from the soundtrack.

Gina Lollobridgida is lovely as Pauline, and Stephen Boyd is handsome and playful as Jules de Canouville, her lover and an officer whom once again Napoleon does not allow her to marry.

Imperial Venus is well worth watching with someone you love.