This storyboard was done for a prospective film about Napoleon quite a few years ago now, when the story was in place, but not the casting. It ended up being made as The Emperor's New Clothes in 2001 with Ian Holm as Napoleon, and the idea was that Boneparte switched places with a double in order to live out his life in freedom. When his double is exiled and dies on St Helena, he has to choose between France and the love of a good woman - should he return "from the dead" to lead France once more or retire to a life of quiet anonymity? I saw the last third of the movie a couple of years ago - and it wasn't bad at all, but I've no idea howmany of these storyboarded sequences made it through to the final cut. The part of movie I caught, though did have the ingenious idea of having Napoleon declaring his true identity and then realising that the hospital where he was taken to "rest" was in fact an asylum, where numerous inmates wandered around the misty grounds with their arms stuffed into their inside pockets muttering that they too were Napoleon. A very eerie and existential moment, and I recall that Ian Holm was over that loony-bin wall quick smart once he clocked that lot.
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