In very much the same way as his films, Kubrick's screenplay comes truly alive after multiple exposures to its densely worded architecture. The historical epics of the 1990s, like "Braveheart," "The Patriot" and "Gladiator," seem trite in comparison, on the screenplay page at least. There is very little that is wistful or overtly romanticized in Kubrick's "Napoleon." People fuck, fight, kill, betray each other and then fuck again.

Much blood is shed, but not only in battle. Some of the strongest scenes occur away from the battlefields, the most poignant in the Grand Army's adventures in Russia. Napoleon leads his troops into a Moscow that has become a ghost town. Kubrick describes it as "deserted, lifeless, a city of the dead, except for the eerie echo of horses' hoofs."

An old man stumbles from a house, brandishing a pitchfork and babbling insanely. Napoleon's soldiers laugh at him, until the old man runs through a soldier with his pitchfork. An officer executes the old man with a pistol, but in the act of doing so blows off the hand of one of his own soldiers.

Marching 1,000 miles home through a terrible winter, Napoleon's army becomes "a starving, feverish mob, without purpose." Then follows an incredible scene in a Russian village, in which officers and soldiers try to fend off the winter freeze by squashing themselves into a tiny house with their horses. They blockade themselves in to stop the other soldiers left outside to die from fighting their way in. But then a fire breaks out and those inside are unable to escape the flames. Other men rush forward from where they have been huddling in an open field to warm themselves, and cook horsemeat on the ends of their swords.

In reading the screenplay, it is obvious that Kubrick's heart was more devoted to the warring Napoleon than to the lover, the father, the son. Kubrick may have personally regarded the love affair between Napoleon and Josephine as "one of the great obsessional passions of all time," but most of their scenes together are filled with clunky dialogue more reminiscent of soap opera than great cinema.

Kubrick often seems in a rush to get on with the next battle, or into the thick of more talk about the tactics and psychology of war. Napoleon had a mental warehouse of war tips and battle tactics, and Kubrick uses a number of them as a way to inject some much-needed humor. "The first rule of warfare," Kubrick has his Napoleon tell a colleague, "is to wear warm winter underwear. You can never conjure up brilliance with a cold bottom."

Kubrick's "Napoleon" would not have been an easygoing cinematic experience. His Napoleon was a dour, complex, demoralized man, even from childhood. Kubrick writes of Napoleon as a teenager in military school, alone in his dorm room, surrounded by books of history, philosophy and poetry, always reading, always learning. In the voice-over to this scene, the utterly miserable Napoleon tells us, "Life is a burden for me. Nothing gives me any pleasure; I find only sadness in everything around me. It is very difficult because the ways of those with whom I live, and probably always shall live, are as different from mine as moonlight is from sunlight."

It is also hard not to read some characteristics of Kubrick the director into his telling of Napoleon the conqueror. Though Napoleon's voice speaks to us directly on only a few occasions, the words seem to be coming straight from the mind of Kubrick. He stated in a number of interviews that organizing a massive campaign of war bore similarities to staging a major film production.

"There is no man more cautious than I am when planning a campaign," Napoleon states in voice-over, echoing Kubrick. "I exaggerate all the dangers, and all the disasters that might occur. I look quite serene to my staff, but I am like a woman in labor. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten, except what leads to success."

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There has been plenty of Internet speculation, and highly suspect rumors, that directors from Martin Scorsese to Ridley Scott to Michael Mann are planning to resurrect Kubrick's "Napoleon," using the original screenplay he wrote 31 years ago.

The most believable scenario is that the Kubrick estate will eventually allow a publisher to produce a book bringing together Kubrick's original screenplay and interviews with the key crew members of the aborted project, lavished with a selection of designs for costumes, props, vehicles and weaponry.

Kubrick never got to stage his beloved Napoleonic wars, but in his 1968 interview with Gelmis, he hinted at what we might have seen had his dream epic been realized on celluloid. It can only be one of the great losses of modern cinema that Kubrick's "Napoleon" never came to be.

"There's a weird disparity between the sheer visual and organizational beauty of the historical battles and their human consequences," Kubrick said. "It's rather like watching two golden eagles soaring through the sky from a distance; they may be tearing a dove to pieces, but if you are far enough away the scene is still beautiful."

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