I watch films alone without eating, drinking or doing anything else to be completely focused on the film. Some films, especially silent ones really require the viewer's undivided attention.
Still, i wasn't able to understand what's going on here. After finishing the film, i couldn't tell you what it was about. Many characters and names are thrown and introduced together. There's some parallel storytelling here but the film jumps between them erratically. The intertitles are written in a poetic fashion that only makes it harder to follow.
The sad part is that the cinematography is pretty decent and most of the scenery looks beautiful. And the film doesn't suffer from any major silent film traps (like drawing out conversations, over/under usage of title cards, overacting, title card first-film second storytelling and ...).
Its hard for me to believe, seeing how competent the film making and camera work is, that it would fail so hard when it comes to pace and structure of the film. So, i'm going to assume some of that is due to the missing footage.
Still, as it is right now, i wouldn't recommend it to anyone that expects a descent story and isn't satisfied by beautiful polish jungles.
Btw, the bear and napoleon looked stupid. Thanks for reading.
