I became a fan of the silent classic Napoleon when I first saw the Coppola version on VHS ages ago. The VCR died a long time ago and I’ve not bother to replace it.

I kept waiting for a DVD or Blu-Ray release of the movie and after it never I appeared, I did some searching on the net to try and find out why.

Turns out the film has a complicated legal rights history and Coppola owns the rights to distribute the film the U.S. Coppola’s father Carmine wrote the music for his version which he is naturally devoted to preserving, but a lot of lost scenes have since been discovered and now there is not enough Coppola music to cover a new full restoration of the film. Since it is a silent movie, it’s not like you can show another hour’s worth of scenes without any music.

Anyway, I guess these complexities are the reason why the film may never be released in the U.S. on a modern format - which is a pity because Gance’s film is a striking experience and certainly an important piece of cinema history. Still not sure why the original 1980 Coppola version couldn’t still be spruced up digitally and released so collectors and film buffs could still at least see and hear it as it is, but maybe there is still some legal reason why that’s not an option.

I did buy the UK DVD of the latest restoration of Napoleon by the British Film Institute that has all the additional scenes and with different music by Carl Davis. I have a region-free DVD player and was very excited to see it. The quality of the video and audio are of course so much better than the old VHS. The Davis score is very fine and the film does get the full digitally restored experience it deserves. My only complaint is that this fuller version does stretch the limits on how long a single film experience can run before fatigue sets in.

But, I still have a fondness and nostalgia for the Carmine Coppola score and still wanted to also have the Coppola version in my collection.

I recently found a used copy of the Coppola version LD and was very excited to see it again. The quality of the picture and sound is definitely better than the old VHS copy, but unfortunately the last couple of minutes on side 2 will not play. The disc looks OK and I tried carefully cleaning the disc, but still fails about 58:30 in. The other 4 sides play fine.

It’s just a minute or two of the film that I can’t see, so not a huge deal.

But I love the movie enough that when I just came across a factory sealed copy I decided to spring for it.

I was astonished to find that the brand new copy also fails to play the end of side 2 just about at the same point.

If anyone else out there happens to own this LD, could you confirm if your copy plays side 2 all the way through without a hitch? All I can conclude is there must have been a manufacturing defect from Universal (MCA) home video on this title. Bummer if that’s the case, but if other copies out there are are good, I’d be curious to know.

I got my LD player used and it seems to work fine, although occasionally has issues changing sides. I suppose it could be an issue with the player, but seems doubtful given the same problem on two different copies of the disc and since the other LDs I still have seem to play fine (I only have a relatively small collection of titles that never made it to DVD or BR).

If anyone lives in the Denver area and would be willing to let me test the disc on another player, I’d be much obliged, because now I’m curious and would like to rule out my player as a problem.

Many thanks for any feedback!

I didn’t know about any of this, it was very educational. Thanks for posting.

Related: still need an extended Moroder Metropolis.

Knew some of this and haven't yet watched my set I bought years ago.

As for not playing it could be a few different issues and I'm not a tech so I'm just going by experience and similar issues.

I have 2 times that I remember this type of thing happening to me.
Both were from long playing sides like this 58 or 59 minutes.

One was an issue where it played fine for years and one day I tried it and had the glitching, figured it out that I had this disc on the end of a shelf and side
1 had the issue and side 2 was fine, this was from a slight warp.

Other disc played fine until again for years bought new and then it stopped working last minute or two, could never really figure it out but
it plays fine on my other players, so I figured its just a disc player issue, but I've had the disc and player since new so it could be something getting weak possibly
or just one disc out of hundreds that has an issue with this one player.