Customer Reviews

Danton (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Danton deeply affected me. I have seen it many times now, and each time is as powerful as the first. It is one of those rarest of creatures: a film that succeeds simultaneously as a work of art and a political essay. There is nothing ponderous or pedantic about it, as with many political films (the recently released Cradle Will Rock comes to mind), nor is it shallow as with most artistic works that try to make political statements. It poses very immediate questions about freedom and democracy, while painting very vivid portraits of Danton and Robespierre, both of whom are brilliantly acted and perfectly cast. Not that Danton is an historical documentary. Far from it, it is not really trying to portray history at all. It is not so much about the Revolution as it is about revolution, or about Danton and Robespierre as it is about how leaders, no matter how brilliant or well-meaning, are eminently human, flawed, and powerless against the hard limitations of human society. Robespierre is portrayed as the elevated idealist, trapped in a hopeless dilemma, and ultimately becoming the very thing he most despised. Danton is the down-to-earth realist, the man of the people, yet he grossly overestimates his influence and the power of the people and ends up paying for it with his life. One reviewer complained that Danton is ahistorical, that it reflects more of the director's own experience in Poland than historical research. This is quite so, and quite intentionally so. There is no doubt that we are meant to draw immediate parallels between France and modern day Easter Europe (the Communists have studied the French Revolution avidly for years), which is precisely why it was banned there. It is art, not a documentary - the director is speaking to the soul as well as the intellect.

This is the best drama of the French Revolution currently available. (it is on par with the 5 hour epic on the French Revolution which is still in copyright dispute in France...the one with Jane Seymour as Marie Antoinette and Peter Ustinov as Mirabeau...if you ever see this grab it because the dont even show it on French TV anymore)

This is an account of the last week of life of Danton. The filming, the costumes and the small parphenalia of everyday life that can be seen in the movie are all rich in authentic detail.

The dialogue were it is historically known is virtual quotation. Where it is not known it is in character. Knowing a fair amount about this time period I could find nothing really to quibble with as far as the accuracy of anything portrayed...in fact I was constantly surprized at the attention to every little detail (and I mean down to the accuracy of the price of bread posted on a placard visible behind the crowd scene.)

This movie is a must have for anyone interested in the politics of the time period...I also recommend La Nuit de Varrene which does not seem to be available with Harvey Keitel as Thomas Paine...it is fictional and the premise is a public coach on the sam route and behind Louis XVI as he is fleeing Paris. The coach has a cross section of people. Retif de La Bretonne, a Lady in Waiting, a rich Industrialist, young Jocobin, etc...who debate the revolution in the carriage. It is excellent for understanding the revolution as seen from a variety of points of view...I dont undertstand why these excellent movies are not put on DVD and made more widely available.

This movie is really outstanding. From beginning to end, it expresses the tension of the French "Reign of Terror" very well. The music, visual style and characterizations blend together excellently to create a mood and to tell the story of the conflict between Danton and Robespierre, and their supporters.

Wajda's Danton is based on Stanislawa Przybyszewska's The Danton Case though the poor woman would be rolling over in her very cold and miserable grave to see what Wajda has done to her brilliant Robespierrist drama. Dantonist though it is, and sometimes glaringly anachronistic in its parallels between Walesa's Poland and Danton's France, Wajda's film is edgy, vibrant and memorable. It captures the surreal and nightmarish quality of Paris in the spring of 1794. The tragedy of radical social change is poignantly portrayed. The acting, especially that of Depardieu--who doesn't precisely suit the role, and Pszoniak, who does marvellously,--- is altogether very good. Try saying to yourself, Robespierre is *not* Stalin or Jaruzelski.

It is a really fantastic movie. One of Wajda's best and one of Depardieu's best. The movie is set in post-Revolution France, in which two groups, one headed by Danton (Depardieu) and one by Robespierre (Wodjciech Pszoniak) who also give a great performance.

The movie is a metaphor for how the persuit of power can make a once idealistic movement into the same dictatorship it has overthrown. It is something that has been repeated all throughout history.

Robespierre, one of the leaders of the revolution has become the leader of France once the Revolution has ended. Danton, another of the Revolution's leaders, still, is a very popular figure and has a lot of power.

Robespierre has started to round up and execute any opposition. Danton decides to return to the public spectrum to challenge Robespierre's tyrannical rule and bring rights to the people.

Danton makes a moving argument, but in the end he, himself, is captured and executed. The movie ends with Robespierre being named dictator for life.

The acting in superb, especially from Depardieu who gives a powerhouse performance as the extremely charismatic Danton, courageous until the end.

The movie is a story of a great tragedy. It is one of the greatest historical movies of all time, in my opinion.

It is a crime that it hasn't been released on DVD.

A dark somber film about a dark somber period in the world's history. The complexity and uncertainty of Danton is elucidated within this magnificent Polish-French production. The tone of the movie is ominous and the acting is dramatic in the tradition of the English stage. The music is superb and elevates the drama in practically every scene.

This performance is one of Depardieu's finest. Interestingly, however, it is the character of Robespierre who receives the most favorable treatment. How do we normally see him? As a monster and a villan, but here he is humanized. Robespierre the man is rightly depicted as being out-of-touch with the masses and remaining unshakeably fixated upon utopian ideals that no man is capable of meeting. Had he comprehended this, France would have been spared much blood and misery. Had Danton been less absorbed and more decisive, perhaps there would have been some mitagation of the great terror. To me, this film would warrant ten stars on a ten point scale.

A powerful drama of the French Revolution depicting how high-minded ideals become the victims of the flawed human beings who espouse them, only to subvert them. The movie gives you a strong sense of the squalor of the French masses in this Revolutionary era and is magnificently filmed. The dialogue (in French) is full of high-minded rhetoric and good intentions coupled with prescience of the limits of these ideals. The setting is around 1794, just after revolutionaries have executed Louis VXI and established the First Republic in France. In his characteristic larger-than-life manner, Gerard Depardieu masterfully portrays the namesake of this movie as a sympathetic, if somewhat eccentric, hero of the French Revolutionary, next to the severe performance by Polish actor Wojciech Pszoniak who plays Robespierre. Robespierre heads the Committee of Public Safety which pursues opponents to the Revolution with increasing vigor. Danton appeals to Robespierre to check the bloody Reign of Terror which follows the Revolution, only to find himself at the guillotine, ostensibly for treason. The encounter between these two lead characters over a dinner to which Robespierre is invited by Danton is one of the most splendid parts of the movie, bringing out the tremendous force of character as well as political clumsiness of Danton. In the prophetic words soulfully delivered by Depardieu, Danton declares that the Revolution is devouring its own children. The almost identical scenes at the beginning and at the end of the movie in which Robespierre's son is reciting the articles of the post-Revolution constitution of the First Republic are haunting. Some commentators have said that this is Polish director Andrzej Wadja's metaphor for the events of his native Poland where the Solidarity crisis was in full force when he made this film. This is a first-rate dramatic performance.

This is a truly great movie. It portrays the beginning of the end of Robespierre's "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution. It ranks up there with "A Man For All Seasons" in the way it effectively exposes and condemns "ends justify the means" politics.

For anyone who wants to see how idealism can pervert justice, this film is for you.

I have seen DANTON many times since its release in the 80s. But everytime I see this movie I become speechless and stunned by the brilliance of the script and the remarkable interpretation of a younger Gerard Depardieu as DANTON. Then, it was probably the first movie I have seen with him, because he was no so famous in the 80s and since then, for me, HE became DANTON, because every time I read about the great French revolutionary his face comes to my mind. The same became true with the excellents actors who played Robespierre and Desmoullins (I do not recall their names, but their performances are brilliant!). In my country, Brazil, we have this DVD spoken in French , with Portuguese subtitles and it is an region 4 DVD, but it would be worthwhile for the Americans and Canadians to have this Region 2 DVD released with subtitles in English and Spanish, because it is probably one of the most important movies ever made about the French Revolution. The scene of the Judgement, while Depardieu speaks the famous phrase : "The Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children..." with a scratched voice, that sounds as if he had spoken for many hours is awesome. The last scenes, the condemned going to the Guillotine, Danton, Desmoullins and the others alternating scenes with the terrified Robespierre in his bed, trembling with fear (historically not one year later Robespierre himself suffered the same fate of Danton!) is wondrous, and the touch of irony of the young boy repeating to the sweating Robespierre the Rights of the Citizens,while the director shows to the public the Guillotine, etc, etc, makes a remarkable statement of Andrezj Wajda that hardly will be forgotten by anyone who sees the movie.

Arguably, this is one of Gerard Depardieu's best performances - and this time he is "Danton" - a big, earthy, popular voice of the French revolution. The film is about his conflicts with the intellectual and unemotional Robespierre, who is unrelenting in continuing the Reign of Terror against anyone believed to be opposing his dictatorship of the revolution. Eventually, someone as popular as Danton is driven under the wheels of the chaotic forces which he helped unleash.

What makes this film for me is Depardieu - I simply can't take my eyes away from the force he projects on the screen. And perhaps that tells us something about Danton himself. The movie was intended as an allegory of so many revolutionary movements that started for good causes but degenerated into messy power struggles and murder as ugly as the kings and czars the people wanted to replace.

Intellectually satisfying and dramatically compelling, this is - without doubt - one of the best films about the political currents behind the French revolution of the 1790's.