Only by defeating those traitors can the people be certain that its men will not be betrayed when they go to war. When war is declared against Austria in April 1792, the city raises a force of 500 volunteers who march to Paris. Offering them a clearer sense of revolutionaries’ highest hopes, may help students feel more keenly what these people were fighting for and what they were unable to salvage. The Lower Depths, based on a short story by Maxim Gorky, lent still more forceful approval to the murder of another grasping proprietor by giving the perpetrator – played by an incandescent Jean Gabin – a happy escape with the lover he had saved. La Marseillaise deceives us about its project by opening at the royal palace at Versailles, where a courtier brings news of the fall of the Bastille. These honorable members of the Third Estate and their friends move in picaresque fashion through the early years of the Revolution to the war fever of 1792 when they march from Marseilles to Paris with the new nation’s nascent anthem, and finally make a triumphant assault on the Tuilleries palace. After hearing the unnamed song for the first time, performed informally by fédérés from Montpellier, the mason’s embrace is uncertain. A fellow traveler rather than party member, Renoir had already given cinematic shape to his political convictions. However, on the DVD jacket and on the film, it's credited to Étienne Arnaud--not Émile Cohl who you see listed on IMDb. Delisle?” – he describes it as “an echo of my own thoughts.” Although Bomier replies that it is just a passing fancy, we next see a large Marseilles crowd singing it while their fédérés prepare to depart. The structure and mood of the movie give sufficient context to make patently clear that this character is in the wrong. But, considering it sure looked like all of Europe would destroy the new republic and it somehow survived, I am pretty sure a lot of French folks would feel inspired by the film. I wasn't. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Your email address will not be published. La marseillaise It's a patriotic movie about the creation of the song of the same name and how it was instrumental in creating unity for the French Republic. In film and text alike, caste, class, and political position coincide to give logical shape to the unfolding of revolution. A woman stops long enough to tell the French soldiers stationed there that Austrian troops have burned her village and hanged her husband. Renoir has been criticized for not being hard enough on the Revolution’s opponents, accused of indulging his conviction that “everyone has their reasons,” which he later popularized in The Rules of the Game. But the film moves quickly down the social scale as it looks south to focus on a band of Marseillais led by Bomier, a mason with … But, it was reasonably well made for a silent--with some interesting camera tricks (such as double-exposures). Holding her head high, she urges a new revolution without actually naming it. When news arrives of a French victory via smuggled newspaper, the band stokes up “La Marseillaise”, the performers remove their wigs and the lead the chorus while still in drag. Looking for something to watch? Nor need he be. In this film, the prisoners are doing a burlesque number in drag. The well-educated Arnaud serves as the principal spokesman for lawfulness, defending an assault on local chateaux by paraphrasing Babeuf’s maxim – “Our masters…  made us barbarians by being barbarians themselves” – and later reminding Bomier that they cannot found order through chaos. This is not just a thoughtful rendering of the French Revolution which echoes the emotions that inspired many revolutionaries. But delineating such political categories did not prevent him from treating individual characters respectfully: the Marquis de Saint-Laurent may resist the idea of citizenship but he is neither a monstrous nor even a rude man. Why, then, return to such a movie? Directed by Nicolas Ribowski. [11] Some of the cultivated noblewomen of Coblenz are faintly ridiculous, but they are also shown struggling to sustain the memory of their previous life. In the first of them, Arnaud explains citizenship to the Marquis de Saint-Laurent, the former commander of a Marseilles fort that Arnaud and his fellow “patriots” have peacefully taken over. Admittedly, it disappointed critics and audiences at the time, and has failed with many a cineaste since, but I would make the case this may well be because Renoir rejected more predictable ways of representing the Revolution to celebrate “the people” instead. Required fields are marked *. It also represents the Revolution’s legacy by offering a portrait of that event’s meaning for many in the Popular Front. The last scene of the triptych takes place at a guard station near Valenciennes, past which refugees are fleeing. The 1938 film La Marseillaise shows the Marseille fédérés marching to Paris and singing the anthem. And so the mason slowly comes around: he works hard with a friendly tutor to master the difficult lyrics, appropriates Arnaud’s claim that it is an echo of his thoughts, and insists that it will unite all of France. Thousands share Casablanca La Marseillaise scene in solidarity against Paris terrorism attack In the wake of the events in Paris, people show their support for … He drew on familiar cinematic technique, for example, by using a montage of newspaper headlines to illustrate competing reactions to the Brunswick Manifesto: the titles and opening lines of the Journal des débats et decrets, Les Actes des Apôtres, Révolutions de Paris, L’Ami du peuple, and other papers whoosh by to indicate a rising level of debate. (1912). Centred on characters from the rebellious city of Marseille, most of the great events of the Revolution from 1789 to 1792 occur offstage. The most interesting woman is, undeniably, Louise Vauclair. In Marseille, citizens capture the royal fortress of Fort Saint-Jean and set up a revolutionary council. In 1936 alone he turned out three films that championed working class interests. What to Watch if You Miss the "Game of Thrones" Cast. As the film’s only unmitigated villain, Marie Antoinette is also its only female stereotype. When released in 1938, it was greeted tepidly on the Left and with outright hostility from the Right. The more conventional fiction film, Le Crime of M. Lange, imagined an idyllic workers’ cooperative and justified the murder of the venal entrepreneur who threatened it. La Marseillaise merits inclusion in any undergraduate survey of the French Revolution, as an occasion to discuss early hopes and fears, and it would be especially useful in the French Revolution section of the Reacting to the Past series. La Marseillaise deceives us about its project by opening at the royal palace at Versailles, where a courtier brings news of the fall of the Bastille. La compagnie Jean Renoir, Société d’Exploitation et de Distribution de Films (SEDIF), Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), Your email address will not be published. Because La Marseillaise offers pleasures aesthetic and intellectual, makes an historically informed argument, and stands alone in its celebration of the French Revolution. Renoir integrated the conclusions of contemporary historians into La Marseillaise, but his film was prescient of the scholarship that would blossom half a century later. Renoir was equally prescient in his representation of revolutionary culture, reflecting on the vitality that a later generation of historians would explore through political clubs, newspapers, popular theater, and, of course, songs. When the Marseilles fédérés arrive in Paris, they are singing “their” hymn to a welcoming crowd. Jennifer Popiel, Mark C. Carnes, Gary Kates. But the film moves quickly down the social scale as it looks south to focus on a band of Marseillais led by Bomier, a mason with a thick southern accent, and a local tax clerk, Arnaud. Use the HTML below. And Renoir enhanced his reflection by mingling the culture of his day with that of the Revolution. It is an engaging and sympathetic portrait through which a singular director and his distinguished historical advisors tried to close the gap between their past and present, if only for a moment. Other characters echo and expand on Arnaud’s statements while the structure of the film indicts the aristocracy. The movie drives this point home across three scenes that lead us to the war. In the RKO film Joan of Paris (1942), "La Marseillaise" is sung by a classroom full of young schoolchildren as the Gestapo hunts their teacher, a French Resistance operative. “So that’s your great national production?” the reactionary Georges Champeaux inquired. Bomier’s mother is a simple woman with no interest in politics, saddened by his departure for Paris and the front, but acquiescent because he is “the man of the house.” The patriotic Louison, with whom Bomier falls in love in Paris, takes part in the city’s public battles, her presence there and her romance with Bomier suggesting a fuller mingling of public and private than Richard Cobb imagined. When Saint-Laurent rejects equality and fraternity, Arnaud genially wishes him a good trip to the border and pleasant stay in Germany. [4] Informed by research from members of the Sorbonne’s newly founded Institut d’histoire de la Révolution française, Jean Renoir managed to produce a film that represented late eighteenth-century society and culture in ways that integrated the scholarship of his day and presciently looked forward to the scholarship of the late twentieth century. As Renoir stages their journey, he makes a case for a French Revolution that was orderly and fraternal, descending into violence only when provoked by treacherous aristocrats and their foreign allies. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Considering how many view the French Republic as the same folks who brought us executions and the Reign of Terror, I could see why this would be less than inspiring for the non-French. Its sets are often plain and the acting unaffected, even if the dialogue feels stilted because it so often consists of declamatory speeches. [12] If students are to watch the darkest film we have about the French Revolution (both literally and figuratively), why not begin with the brightest?