#josephine beauharnais

[pobodleru]

Napoleon, Josephine and the tarot cart:

VI The lovers

[braucherei]

Just finished seeing Napoleon (2023) for the first time! I liked it more than I thought I would. The comedy bits were funny and the core relationship of Napoleon and Josephine was engaging even if all the other characters were pretty flat.

I don’t know much about Napoleon post-emperor but the history at least before that was unsurprisingly pretty all over the place.

SPOILERS (this is a bullet pointed list of moments mostly from the first quarter of the movie set during the French Revolution/Directoire) (EDIT: I just saw the movie for a second time so I added amendments/clarifications in red)

the movie opens with a text scroll summarizing in very vague terms what led to the French Revolution

The first real scene is Marie-Antoinette being guillotined while Ça ira is sung. Her execution is then immediately followed by Robespierre giving his “Terror and Virtue” speech very menacingly

Didn’t care for the guy casted as Robespierre didn’t really look like him and was too old. He just comes off as a generic “power hungry” politician in a powdered wig

When Napoleon first charges at the siege of Toulon a cannon hits his horse right in the chest and Barras has to awkwardly help Napoleon off the ground

The next day Napoleon is awarded for taking Toulon and for some reason the gored horse is still there. Napoleon reached his hand inside the horse and grabs the cannon ball

A scene or two after Toulon they show Thermidor where the whole convention turns on aspiring dictator Robespierre

Barras is in the balcony of the Convention and specifically yells that Robespierre wants to be “judge, jury and executioner”

This Robespierre runs away as a crowd of deputies chase him up the stairs. Someone in a chair that might have been an 18th century wheel chair falls over but the scene happens so fast I wasn’t sure

I believe it was just a regular chair tossed over during Thermidor but I’m still not entirely sure since there is some kind of either design or mechanism on the side of the chair

Robespierre pulls a gun on the mob of deputies chasing him but the gun jams so he pulls out a second gun and shoots himself

Barras says “you missed” and then fingers his jaw wound to I guess parallel Napoleon and the horse

A little later Napoleon is at the Victim’s ball and Josephine is seen there next to Barras.

Thérésa Cabarrus is also in the cast list but she is never named in the movie so I assume she will be in the Director’s cut

Josephine and a woman hug while leaving prison so that’s probably Cabarrus but her name is never said

There’s also a scene that starts with Barras and Napoleon goofing around together and throwing nuts at a wall which is sweet I guess

Weirdly Barras is the only male character Napoleon seems to be genuinely friendly with

I was wrong it was his brother Lucien not Barras that Napoleon was goofing around and throwing nuts with which makes more sense. I must have gotten their mullets confused

Napoleon returns from Egypt in this movie because he hears Josephine is cheating on him

the newspapers he gets from the English aren’t stories on how the Directoire is unpopular/corrupt but instead cartoons of him being cucked

(This is foreshadowing for the worst part of the movie)

The only real Fouché scene is when Napoleon is sitting with the Directors telling them how he’s going to coup them and it’s going around the table getting their reactions as Napoleon calls their names

Then Napoleon says Fouché and it cuts to a guy standing in the corner of the room

Talleyrand is a more important part of the movie and is given some of historical Fouché’s moments (I liked his actor a lot actually and he’s the best character besides the core two)

Barras also stops being a character after he agrees to resign as director but he continues to show up in the background throughout the movie

This is SPOILERS AGAIN for the end of the movie but I have to mention this because it was an insane decision

———————————————————————

While Napoleon is in Elba the Tsar of Russia rolls up to Josephine’s manor in a carriage and is “entertained” by her

Napoleon sees a cartoon of him being cucked again in the newspaper and that is why the Hundred Days happens

[suburbanbeatnik]

As promised, here's my clinch sketch of Napoleon and Josephine, the winners of my Valentine's Day poll! You see them circa 1796-7, during the Italian campaign.

Anyway, this was fun! Maybe I'll do more at some point.

[ukdamo]

Josephine Bonaparte at Malmaison

Jennifer Chrystie

A cure for a sick house in a sick country

is a garden throbbing with exotic life

I have brought the Antipodes to Paris

to heal and intrigue, to take my mind

off the sharpness of death

Kangaroos abound, their deer-like heads

cresting the foliage and cockatoos

flaunting golden crowns screech

to a halt on eucalypt boughs

Water moles burrow in secret mud

The swans are black as the natives

of Terres Australes or the trunks

of fire-ravaged forests

Some expect them to moult

to their natural white

Mimosa and boronia mimic sun and stars

hark back to my tropical childhood

They thrive in the hothouse like embryos

in the fecund womb I would love to possess

If only Napoleon could reproduce

by bud, cutting or runner

With gentle secateurs I dead-head the roses

This pink and cream with foxed petals

reminds me so much of my first husband

beheaded in full flower by his country

[myrcella-lannister]

VANESSA KIRBY AS JOSÉPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS Costume designers: Janty Yates and David Crossman NAPOLEON (2023)

[diioonysus]

art + hair pieces

[largecucumber]

Hiiiii 😫💖How are you guyssss?

Here’re some cute and silly drawings. THEY ALL LOOK SO FUNNY (especially Ney 🥲) There’re so many things I wanna draw, but I just don’t have the time waaahhh 😭

Anyways, I hope y’all are doing fantastic 💐😚

[anthemias]

NAPOLEON (2023) dir. Ridley Scott

[illustratus]

Reception at Malmaison in 1802 by François Flemeng

[promises-of-paradise]

I found this autochrome photo (very early colour photography) from the early 1900s-1910s of a woman in a dress that appears to be inspired by Empress Josephine’s coronation gown! I am so in shock because this genuinely looks like a photo of Josephine.

[boneyagainsttheworld]

Happy Valentine's Day with Napoleon and Josephine 💖

[pobodleru]

L'angoisse

[norrevu]

imperial)) b/w

[suburbanbeatnik]

Sexy clinch 1790s French edition

[ukdamo]

Malmaison

Amy Lowell

Verse 1

How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall!  How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside!  Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees.  Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses!  Roses!  But the road is dusty.  Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk.  Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves...  Roses ... They have told her so.  The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face.  She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner.  Roses indeed!  The guillotine more likely.

The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun.

[thefairyfellermasterstroke]

If twitter existed in the Napoleonic Era