Arte - Trafalgar The Greatest Battle in Naval History (2006)

Reconstructed using a new technique that allows characters to be embedded in a virtual setting, here is the legendary battle of Trafalgar. A spectacular, first grandiose documentary spectacle that takes us as close to historical reality as possible! This historical drama takes us back to one of the great battles in naval history. It took place in 1805 during the great Napoleonic Wars and pitted the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of Spain and France. This battle brings together 60 ships, 35,000 sailors and more than 5,000 cannons. In one of the most decisive engagements ever, the Royal Navy lost only one ship while sinking 22 French and Spanish warships. Since 1803, Napoleon dreamed of invading England. An ambition for which the Emperor transformed the small port of Boulogne-sur-Mer into a gigantic stronghold where 150,000 soldiers were stationed. In order to make a success of the landing, he sought to attract the English naval forces away from the Channel. After a few vain attempts to take the fleets of Collingwood and Nelson towards the West Indies, Admiral de Villeneuve allowed himself to be locked up in front of Cadiz, off Cape Trafalgar, to lure the English there. But he soon receives a counter-order and has to go to the Mediterranean. Two days after leaving the harbour, on October 21, 1805, the French ships commanded by Villeneuve were intercepted by twenty-seven English ships led by the flamboyant Admiral Nelson… A striking military and human story with a face-off between two opposing admirals. In the center of the battle it is through the voice of Admiral de Villeneuve, his doubts and his moods, that director Fabrice Hourlier chose to tell the Battle of Trafalgar. A way to rehabilitate this great loser of history, faithful servant of the Emperor, while at the heart of the drama of this Napoleonic episode. Here we discover an admiral who admires his enemy Nelson, a man whose tormented sensitivity shows through, especially in the last letter to his wife. From sequences meticulously reconstructed into simulated images and fictional scenes played by actors in a virtual setting, this documentary restores the historical reality as closely as possible, based on the analyzes of French and English historians, sailors and specialists. During more than two years, in France, in England and in Spain, the director scoured the archives, civilian and military, checked the plans of the ships and was largely inspired by the iconography of the time to find the luminous texture and colored as period images. A spectacular film on the last great confrontation of sailing ships at sea. Award of the Research & Innovation Section at the 2007 HD Film Festival (Paris, France).

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