17 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK RECAP: Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) – Part 2

  1. That backless bonnet is incredible. It looks like nothing more than one of the giant plastic visors you see tourists wear on a hot day at disnseyland or the like.

  2. This thing is hysterically awful. How do you watch it all?

    Therese’s teal w/ gold boob fringe ensemble looks like she’s auditioning for Sampson & Delilah.
    The Baby Huie 1830s-ish bonnets do seem to be giving way for more accurate examples, but no one has a cap underneath. Actually, underneath doesn’t seem to be a concept here since there seems to be zero underpinnings anywhere.

    Do I have time for a drink or two before part III?

  3. So do you think North and South’s Tits Out is related to Therese? They wear similar — but years apart similar –clothes, similar 1980s hair, are used by mem, etc. Lol.

  4. This is just so bad… Plus, I didn’t know how much I needed in my life the phrases, “Liz Taylor’s 1980s caftan” and “I refuse to cap any war shit” until now.

  5. Note the FREE-STANDING collar? I just noted Resi’s daughter side-eyeing mommy’s boobs teetering on the edge of falling out, like, real hard. Almost as good as that meme with Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield.

    1. That one costume on Therese really hit the snark-worthy trifecta: derpy bonnet, a near-illegal dose of “I don’t care, I want my tits out,” and even the equivalent of a floating ruff.

      And she’s even wearing those crappy wrist-length fingerless mesh gloves.

      Was Stephanie Beacham contractually obliged to show her tits in everything she did? (Hopefully, she kept the puppies inside the entire run of SISTER KATE, when she played the title role.)

  6. So many bad clothes. But Therese’s take the cake. Whenever I look at costumes like that I just imagine feeling cold and uncomfortable. Ugh.

    Also, what the heck with this plot? I can’t say I’m an expert in the particular history, but it seems… well let’s say I believe some of this could have gone down but the particular plotting seems over the top.

  7. I think that French history got rather lost in the story but hey, boobs & lace. Viva! But does he ever shave? That perpetual 5o’clock shadow is so annoying.

    1. Armand Assante is basically a sasquatch in real life, so he has permanent five o’clock shadow unless the makeup department spackles his face.

      Actually, with his beard turning white it probably isn’t a problem these days.

  8. Napoleon might have had a dozen uniforms, but they’d all look the same. Each type of unit had a different design; cuirassiers were different from hussars, were different from artillerists, etc Sometimes units within the same specialty would be distinguished by the colours of the lapel facings, buttons, or other trim, but they would all have the same cut and general style. How men managed to fight effectively in these often tight and constricting garments never ceases to amaze me..

    1. Second that: military and naval men in France wore their uniform pretty much all the time (in contrast to Britain where uniform was only worn when with one’s regiment / ship: you should never see Jane Austen’s Captain Wentworth in his naval uniform, for example), so apart from the different orders of dress (full dress, undress, service dress etc) they would always look the same until the uniform regs changed.

      The garments weren’t as constricting as they look: they were cut on a totally different principle to modern jackets and trousers, which required them to be tight in order to allow free movement. Counter-intuitive, but true. Decades ago my husband briefly owned an original 1812-reg British infantry officer’s jacket. It was skin-tight on him – but wearing it he could perform the entire contemporary sword exercise, all the regulation blows and parries, without straining any of the seams at all.

    2. Napoléon had a few different designs over the years and I think the ladies at Frock Flicks are pointing out this series not displaying that range? Early on he had quite different uniforms, from [acting] Colonel to Brigadier General. This series seems to make it all one. He might have worn his red Premier Consul uniform while on the Marengo campaign, later trading it for his general’s uniform. This is of course all before his more known colonel’s Imperial Guard uniform, which he often wore as Emperor.

      I’ve seen his famous grey coat in person, along with his bicorn. It’s his iconic look, but I’ve seen two references to an olive overcoat: Capt. Frederick Lewis Maitland’s description of first meeting Napoléon on the H.M.S. Bellerophon and one obscure lithograph.

      And on the subject of uniforms, I do love the story of Napoléon’s choice painter Jacques-Louis David designing a regiment’s uniforms – mounted grenadiers. David wanted them in the style of Modo Antiquo, mixing operatic Ancient Greeks with military regalia. He paraded these designs for Napoléon and his marshals. Napoléon found them downright hideous. Even the peacock himself, Marshal Murat, was dumbfounded and thought them disgustingly garish. Napoléon politely declined to put them in production and never invited David to design uniforms again…

  9. BTW, the “Block of Wood” actor is Patrick Cassidy, half-brother of David “Keith Partridge” Cassidy and brother of Shaun “Joe Hardy” Cassidy. (I guess he wasn’t androgynous enough to make it as a ’70s teen heart throb, like his more famous siblings.)

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