Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Waterloo
1970 · Sergey Bondarchuk · Waterloo on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for shots taken straight down from directly overhead. (camera)
Bondarchuk uses helicopters and camera towers to shoot massed formations from above, turning marching columns and squares into shifting geometric patterns.
Payoff: From that height individual soldiers disappear into pure pattern, which is exactly the film's point about history.
Notice the scarlet coats and blue uniforms against green fields. (light)
Nannuzzi's camera exploits the color contrast between British red, French blue, and mud churned green, so the battlefield reads like a moving map.
Payoff: You can track which army holds which ground by color alone, even in the chaos.
Watch the infantry hold tight squares against the cavalry charge. (staging)
Bondarchuk stages actual Napoleonic drill with thousands of coordinated extras, showing exactly how disciplined formation is supposed to work before it breaks down.
Payoff: The film wants you to understand the tactics, not just feel the chaos of the battle.
Notice how differently Steiger and Plummer carry themselves. (performance)
Steiger plays Napoleon as feverish and volatile, while Plummer's Wellington stays dry, unflappable, and detached, even in the same scene.
Payoff: Two acting styles are standing in for two different ideas about how to lead men.
Listen for how the cannon fire becomes part of the score. (sound)
Nino Rota's music blends with cannon, musketry, drums, and hooves, so the noise of battle works almost like an extension of the orchestra.
Payoff: War here has a rhythm you can feel, not just a spectacle you watch.
Once you have seen it
Notice the cavalry charge intercut between aerial and ground views. (cutting)
During the great charge against the infantry squares, Bondarchuk alternates the abstract aerial pattern of the assault with the claustrophobic view from inside the squares.
Payoff: You get the tactic and the terror in the same sequence, never just one or the other.
Notice Wellington's line about a battle lost and a battle won. (structure)
Wellington's reflection that next to a battle lost the saddest thing is a battle won undercuts the film's own spectacle right after delivering it.
Payoff: The film keeps handing you awe and then immediately taking the triumph back out of it.
Notice how often the film returns to the dead. (staging)
Between the tactical set pieces, Bondarchuk keeps cutting back to bodies and wounded men left on the field, undercutting the grandeur of the formations.
Payoff: Spectacle and cost are shown in the same breath, so the film never lets you enjoy one without the other.
Carry this in: Watch the overhead shots. From up there, men become pattern, and the pattern doesn't care who's in it.