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Waterloo was a Soviet-Italian-British film of 1970, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. It was the story of the preliminary events and the Battle of Waterloo, and was famous for its lavish battle scenes.
The film was originally intended to star Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole but the start date for shooting was never convenient for the two stars to appear together. So instead it starred Rod Steiger (portraying Napoleon Bonaparte) and Christopher Plummer (portraying the Duke of Wellington). De Laurentiis put the failure of the film in certain territories to the lack of star power in the billing. Orson Welles makes a couple of brief appearances as King Louis XVIII of France. Other stars included Jack Hawkins as General Picton, Virginia McKenna as the Duchess of Richmond and Dan O'Herlihy as Marshal Ney, whom he closely resembled.
The film includes some fifteen thousand Soviet foot soldiers as extras and two thousand cavalrymen, some of which were cossack horsemen. Fifty circus stunt riders were used to perform the dangerous horsefalls. These numbers brought an epic quality to the battle scenes. This is particularly true of the panning aerial shots of Marshal Ney's cavalry charging up and over the escarpment to break like a wave around the British squares. The slow motion section of the charge of the Scots Greys is a tribute to the painting "Scotland Forever!" by Lady Butler in Leeds City Art Gallery.
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