Book Review: WATERLOO--MAKING AN EPIC

 

The 1970 historical epic film WATERLOO is still considered by many to be an expensive flop, but I've long maintained that it has one of the greatest cinematic battle sequences of all time. Bear Manor Media has recently published WATERLOO--MAKING AN EPIC, a massive tome written by Simon Lewis that more than gives this underrated film its due. 

This book is over 600 pages, matching the huge scale of the movie itself. Lewis delves into every area of the film's production, and even gives mini-bios of the major members of the cast & crew. He also examines why the film was not financially successful upon its original release, and there's even a chapter examining how the movie matches up to the historical facts of the battle. 

The author is a huge aficionado of WATERLOO (having been mesmerized by it after seeing it as a child), and the huge amount of info he provides is a testament to his knowledge and love of the subject. Despite the length of the book, it's never boring, as Lewis writes in a easy-to-read, fast-paced style. 

Much of the book is spent dealing with the filming of the battle, which was done in the Ukrainian countryside, with the use of thousands of soldiers from the Soviet Army. Through interviews with actors and crew members who were there on location, Lewis details the many challenges the filmmakers faced while shooting in a remote spot behind the Iron Curtain that was basically still decades behind the times. 

The book also includes hundreds of black & white photographs, most of them taken on location, which give an idea of the scope and size of the production. 

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Of course, this is a fan of WATERLOO saying this. But I also believe this is one of the best "making-of" movie books I have ever read. The sheer amount of detail and info is astounding. This is not an inexpensive book--I bought the softcover version, which was $38--but it is most definitely worth it. I've read and seen several movie books that were just as or even more expensive, but were nowhere near as extensive or informative. 

Simon Lewis deserves all the accolades he can get for writing WATERLOO-MAKING AN EPIC. One can even compare him to WATERLOO producer Dino De Laurentiis and director Sergei Bondarchuk--like them, he must have spent an incredible amount of time and effort on this project. The best thing Lewis has done is give WATERLOO the respect and appreciation it deserves as a classic cinematic epic that was made without the use of CGI or extensive off-set special effects. (For those that have not seen WATERLOO, you really need to. The best Blu-ray version of it is a Region-Free release from Imprint.)