Napoleon was the project that Stanley Kubrick prepared most meticulously and with the greatest care. This chest of drawer bears witness to the precision of his research, containing index cards relating not only the stages in the emperor's life but also the lives of people he frequented, each of whom is identified by a coloured mark.
In order to assemble so much information, beginning in June 1968 Stanley Kubrick recruited a dozen students of Felix Markham's, a history professor at Oxford. He entrusted them with reading numerous biographies of Napoleon and writing up some fifty biographical files.
Kubrick himself dove into numerous works: his collection of books on the subject numbered more than five hundred. He also procured more than 17,000 illustrations representing Napoleon or his entourage.
Stanley Kubrick was on the look-out for the slightest detail, interested in every aspect of the individual's life: readings, love affairs, sex life, sense of humour, culinary preferences... He sought to not only give the viewer historical and geographical bearings but also enable him to discover Napoleon in everyday life.
At the same time that he was polishing his script, Kubrick prepared the upcoming shooting: his assistant, Andrew Birkin photographed French and Italian monuments connected with Napoleonic history; other location research was carried out in Eastern Europe. In all, 15,000 location photos were collected.
The director planned on shooting in natural settings, especially for budgetary reasons. He therefore sought the most appropriate sites as well as countries where extras would be least expensive: he negotiated with the Rumanian government in order to be assured of the presence of 50,000 extras from the regular army for battle scenes.
All these documents attest to Stanley Kubrick's passion for the figure of Napoleon as well as to the obstinacy with which he attempted to make this film financially possible without, for all that, compromising his usual aesthetic standards.