I didn’t say there was anything wrong with including the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. I just don’t like the way the director handled it in Waterloo 1970. He spent too short a time on it (unlike most everything else where he dragged it out) and he didn’t make it dramatic enough. A soldier announced that Napoleon has broken through, but it falls flat. There is no build up, no anticipation, nothing going on in the film at the time. And I don’t like the portrayal of the Duchess of Richmond herself. As I said, the Duchess didn’t look like that. Nor did she act like that.
I still say though the actors were mostly English and Ameircan, the director was Russian and it shows. He has no dramatic sense. He drags things out and doesn’t build up to a climax very well. He insists on filming every page the way he filmed War and Peace right before that. He has too many close ups of people’s faces for no particular dramatic reason and has multiple points of view that don’t fit in well with the action.
