Kevin Brownlow’s been obsessed with Abel Gance’s epic masterpiece Napoleon for going on sixty years now. Note well that I do very much mean epic: the film, in its full, uncut, unexpurgated glory, is FIVE AND A HALF HOURS LONG. Let us but hope that the San Francisco Silent Film Festival has built an intermission or two into the run time, although it’s not really worth harping on the film’s length because by all accounts it really is one of the undersung masterpieces of the silent era, and this is, so far, the only planned screenings of the full, restored film – and Brownlow says there are no plans for a DVD or Blu-ray, either. Four screenings, this weekend and next, at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. That’s it. (Kristin M. Jones, Wall Street Journal)