Napoleon (1927)

Abel Gance felt that even a big picture was too small for him, so for the finale he gave himself three. As Bonaparte's army marches, the image expands to three times its original width, a panorama shot with three cameras stacked on top of each other, before breaking into a kaleidoscope of Bonaparte, Josephine and his eagle in pulses of red, white and blue. After hours inside a conventional frame, the screen itself seems to charge forward. This is a silent epic of five and a half hours or more, depending on the restoration, so treat it as an event, and look for a version that shows the finale at full width.