Customer Reviews

Marat Sade

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This 1966 film depicts the Marquis de Sade's imprisonment in a mental asylum and a play that he directs using the other inmates as actors. The story of Sade was recently related in "Quills," and that film is somewhat similar in tone, but not plot. Believe it or not, the film is also a musical! The "play" within the movie chronicles events from the French Revolution pertaining to Marat, and is put on for the asylum's leader and the local gentry. The local gentry are shocked at times, and the asylum leader interrupts the play several times with interjections concerning the play's radical ideas and how the gentry are depicted. As the play reaches its culmination, the inmates inevitably begin to stage their own revolution. The action is often confusing, but the emotions conveyed are so intense, that the film can be enjoyed on a visceral level.

The direction of this film is quite brilliant, and it must have been pretty shocking when it was released 36 years ago. The acting is also very intense and realistic. Glenda Jackson has her starring debut here and is quite appealing, considering that she's playing a mental asylum inmate. The only quibble I have with the DVD is the poor sound quality. Even on DVD, the sound is muddled and the actor's dialogue is often unintelligible, especially during the songs. Unfortunately, the DVD does not include captions/subtitles, which would have helped immensely (there are no other extras either). A very worthwhile movie that could have been presented better on this DVD.

This movie is actually a filmed version of a play and this is obvious in the viewing; the director doesn't make use of all the potential of the medium, it's filmed all in one take (just as a play goes from start to finish in one go), and the scene transitions are abrupt and poor. That being said, this film deserves no other criticism; it is certainly the finest I've ever seen and, I would argue, a great movie in the English cinema. What makes it deserve such praise is that the acting is all very convincing and compelling, the costumes and staging are sublime and the script is, simply put, brilliant. The original title of the work fuctions as an apt summary: "The assasination and persecution of Jean-Paul Marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum at Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade." Set in the Napoleonic era eighteen years after the French Revolution, the Marquis (imprisoned for both political and sex crimes) directs the mentally ill inmates in a stylized recreation of the murder of Jean-Paul Marat (a rabid Jacobin, confined to his bathtub by a skin disease, who wrote the most sanguinary Revolutionary propaganda) by Charlotte Corday (from a noble background, but actually a partisan of the Girondin Revolutionaries who had been purged by Marat's party). This is a highly cerebral play and, although the scrip (a translation of Peter Wiess' play) takes a very few liberties with the historical facts, a knowledge of the Revolution greatly helps in understanding and appreciating this sometimes obscure movie. There are real intellectual pyrotechnics in the debates between Marat and de Sade, and the Marat's monologues are filled with fine revolutionary polemics. Corday is very well played, and her scenes are some of the most emotionally intense. The brilliant script, which doesn't shrink from tackiling great Ideas, combined with the great execution make this a superb movie. Or rather film.

Everything positive the other reviewers said about the performance recorded in this film is true. But the DVD product is a disgrace. The film is grossly grainy, bad even as pan-and-scan goes (there are actually scenes in which a conversation occurs between two people who are BOTH mostly off-screen because the frame occupies the space between), and generally a shameful engineering job. I'm torn between the politics of saying "buy it so that a piece of real art can be 'voted for' with dollars" and saying "don't support the trash-marketing of a lousy DVD version, wait for the Criterion version."

The only problem that I have with this production is that, for some inexplicable reason, they do the scene of "Marat's Nightmare" in pantomime, completely wasting one of the great portions of the play. The audio recording of this production, which used to be available on Caedmon, includes the scene with the dialogue intact. I would have given the movie version 5 stars but for this disappointing omission. Otherwise, it's an all time classic.

Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade as performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company under the direction of Peter Brook. (1966)

The cast and a history thereof:

The Marquis de Sade, as performed by Patrick Magee.
What needs to be known of de Sade involves, primarily, his second stay at the asylum at Charenton, although, it an idea of his philosophy should be displayed here. de Sade was a hedonist who had been to the Bastille and Charenton before, namely, for abuse towards prostitutes and various others of either gender. He was viewed as a dangerous sexual deviant and spent a good portion of his life imprisoned, until the start of the French Revolution of which, he supported (possibly to prevent his own death.) He was a nihilist, but also supported a certain Utopian socialism, and had effectively became one of the earliest existentialists, though he is rarely regarded with such a title.
At the start of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte had him, again, imprisoned, residing in Charenton under the asylum's director

Abbe de Coulmier, as performed by Clifford Rose.
Monsieur Coulmier was very liberal in dealing with the treatment of patients, allowing de Sade to set up a series of plays that were available for public viewing, within the fictional content of Marat/Sade the play in question is The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. The play takes a novel approach to theater, allowing de Sade to interact and converse directly with the fifteen years deceased

Jean-Paul Marat, as performed by Ian Richardson.
Marat is, of course, the focus of this play and his role in the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror are vital facts. Marat was a member of the Jacobin Club, a group of radical republican thinkers, directly responsible for these events, with the help of Girondists, less a political party and more of a group of like-minded thinkers.
His body racked with a fever he threw himself into writing for the revolution, creating policy on dealing with enemies, declaring traitors and spurring the masses on in their bloodbath in the name of freedom. Much of Marat/Sade deals with the questions of de Sade concerning whether or not this bloodshed was worth it, or the right way to go about it. Many considered Marat a hero, though there were more than a few who considered him a butcher.
Following the Revolution, Jacobin's spurred on the Terror, claiming that the enemies of France were not eliminated and were, in fact, in hiding. In summary (or rather, not quite in his exact words,) Marat claims that they wear the cap of the people, but their underwear is embroidered with crowns and that the lot of them are the first to scream beggar, thief, or guttersnipe when a shop or two is looted. This is what leads him to the idea that the new aristocracy is any who owns more than any other. He points out that one will keep a horse, another his house in the country and another his army. This, he claims, is contrary to liberty and freedom. These, he goes on, are the new enemies of France and the bloodshed continued, numbering anywhere from eighteen thousand to forty thousand dead.
His writing would go on until he was visited three times by the assassin

Charlotte Corday, as performed by Glenda Jackson.
Who had decided to assassinate him due to the mass atrocities he and his faction had caused, though, the final decision would lie with the arrest of twenty-two Girondists and, later, the denouncing of their leader Jacques Pierre Brissot. She was successful in her endeavor, as might be anticipated by the full title of Marat/Sade.




Major themes throughout:
From the beginning, it becomes clear that this is no standard play, being a work of metafiction and delving into a play within a play. Through this medium, it allows Peter Weiss make light of the standard structure of theater and display a level of creativity, in the case of the film, that often goes unseen.
Additionally the (approximately) true history behind this work is intriguing, bring to the foreground a brutality that is generally ignored in French culture. Furthermore, French society becomes reflected within the asylum at Charenton, the down-trodden going through a similar metamorphosis as the upheaval of their very society not two decades earlier.
The real treat, the audience will find, is the rhetoric between de Sade and Marat throughout the play, each attacking the philosophy of the other, presenting questions each other and the audience. This inevitably leaves the audience to decide.




Marat/Sade is a rhapsody that should be made more available to a larger audience, creating within them worthwhile question and providing an interesting history at the same time: allowing the audience to see the brutal legacy of France, drowning the preconceived stereotypes of the country (at least within the United States.)

MARAT/SADE is the film version of a play that arose from an actor's workshop exploring various theatrical theories expressed by French actor-director-writer Antoine Artard, who extolled a style of performance he described as "theatre of cruelty"--which, broadly speaking, consists of an assault upon the audience's senses by every means possible. Ultimately, and although it makes effective use of its setting and the cinematography mirrors the chaos expected of such a situation, the film version of MARAT/SADE is less a motion picture than a record of a justly famous stage play that offers a complex statement re man's savagery.

The story of MARAT/SADE concerns the performance of a play by inmates of an early 1800s insane asylum, with script and direction by the infamous Marquis de Sade. (While this may sound a bit farfetched, it is based on fact: de Sade was known to have written plays for performance by inmates during his own incarceration in an asylum.) The story of the play concerns the assasination of the revolutionary Marat by Charotte Corday, but the play itself becomes a debate between various characters, all of which may be read as in someway intrinsically destructive and evil. Since all the characters are played by mentally-ill inmates of the asylum (the actor playing Marat, for example, is described as a paranoid, and the actress playing Corday suffers from sleeping sickness and meloncholia), the debate is further fueled by their insanity, unpredictability as performers, and the staff's reactions to both their behavior and the often subversive nature of the script they play out.

Patrick Magee as de Sade, Glenda Jackson as the inmate playing Corday (it was her breakout performance), and Ian Richardson as the inmate playing Marat offering impressive performances; indeed, the ensemble cast as a whole is incredibly impressive, and they keep the extremely wordy script moving along with considerable interest. Even so, it will be obvious that the material works better as a live performance than as a film, and I do not recommend it to a casual viewer; its appeal will be largely limited to the literary and theatrical intelligentsia. The DVD includes the original theatrical trailer, but beyond this there are no extras of any kind.

If you want to re-examine your most fundamental, most established beliefs, about the meaning of life and death, the significance of being, and of the ability of human beings to set in judgement over the lives and deaths of other human beings, this is the film you want to see. Virtually all other films I know of that are either about Marquis De Sade or the fine moral thread of the French Revolution verge on the comical or the sleazy and the whole subject of their writings gets obfuscated by emotive melodrama or the moral right. In short, no one approached these topics intellectually; that is, until this film (Marat-Sade).

In summary, a brilliant movie, somewhat in the same vein as "A Clockwork Orange".

Forget the hype surrounding the adequate "Quills." Marat Sade is a great film, which ultimately not only blows Quills away, it sends it down the street, around the corner and into the dumpster. Marat Sade is a true masterpiece, superbly acted by the Royal Shakespeare Company, amazingly well set and cast, well directed and, above all, well written. Peter Weiss' amazingly provocative and subversive screenplay, which he adapted from his stage play, is a forum for a debate between de Sade and Jean-Paul Marat, one of the main instigators of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Patrick Magee plays the Divine Marquis to perfection. Note this is not Patrick MacNee, the actor from the Avengers, rather this is the very well renowned British character actor who played the rich elderly victim/victimizer in "A Clockwork Orange". Ian Richardson is superb as Marat, and Glenda Jackson is amazing as a somnambulant who plays Charlotte Corday, Marat's assassin. Unlike Quills, which tries to bludgeon its one dimensional message into you, this play-within-a-film will make you use your brain, like it or not. Who is truly evil? Marat? De Sade? The liberal yet tyrannical post-revolutionary heirarchy? Everyone? No one? Does evil even exist? And while the actors in Quills are OK, they can't do much with the deep-as-a-comic-book charicatures written for them. Sorry Kate, you're really pretty and it was really nice of you to show us your breasts and all, but Quills comes in a far distant second to this cinematic tour-de-force.

One word of caution: The version of Marat Sade that I have, which was released by I.S. Productions, Inc., is not letterboxed, and suffers because of it in several brief instances. Try to get a letterbox version. However, regardless of format, see this important film.

I saw this Film in a Cinema when it was released. It was shot in 16mm which is why its grainy. The framing on this DVD is exactly as it was on the cinema screen. The closeups are deliberate art not, bad pan and scan. The audio tracks are also an accurate reproduction of the film's audio. This is a deliberately a-tonal musical. This DVD is wonderful, A Criterion release can't be much better.

You ever watch a movie that just sends chills up and down your body from beginning to end? You ever watch a movie that cements itself in your subconscious and pulverizes you with its magnetism over and over, until you just cannot take it any more? You ever watch a movie that is so rich and so disturbingly authentic that you feel compelled to laud it above all others?

This is that movie.

From the opening credits until the closing ones, `Marat/Sade' is one of the most engaging and utterly phenomenal pieces of art I have ever witnessed. It is mind shattering in its delivery, coupling some of the most intriguing and utterly brilliant performances with one of the most compelling concepts ever put to film. This is a masterclass film, one that gets everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) right.

The film tells of the Marquis de Sade, a man imprisoned at Charenton Asylum in 1808. He writes and directs a play starring his fellow inmates, a play that tells of the French Revolution, and he puts it on for the asylum director Coulmier and his family. The film, taking place within the small confines of a prison cell and never leaving that one particular room, is so visually expansive that it is beyond me how director Peter Brook was able to accomplish this. The film feels so much bigger than it is. It's hard to really explain well how this movie works, but just know that despite the fact that it never leaves the one room it takes you to places much further than the confines of a cell would suggest.

The film is based on the stage play by Peter Weiss and is shot much like a theatrical production, but it never feels stiff as some `stage to screen' films can feel. This film moves with such fluidity, it's insanely impressive.

Brook's decision to focus quite frequently on facial expressions of the cast was a brilliant way of making the film feel much more intimate than a mere stage production. What is so important about this decision was that it allows the audience to see the insanity that lurks behind the inmates eyes, because the real story being told is not that of the play being put on but that of the character development of these lost souls, each of them playing their part in this intense and very controversial production. These inmates become these characters and they absorb their weaknesses and their strengths and they embellish them with reckless abandon. Watching their own humanity fester behind their sockets is chilling to say the least.

There are two performers here that are beyond mesmerizing and that truly deserve all our recognition; and they are Glenda Jackson and Patrick Magee. Patrick Magee delivers such a powerful and moving performance as the Marquis de Sade, his control so consistent and absorbing. He takes a much different approach to the character than the one presented by Geoffrey Rush in `Quills', both spectacular but Magee is leagues better. There are scenes where the camera is focused on his face and he is delivering a lengthy monologue that just sinks right into our flesh and becomes a part of us. He is matched every step of the way by Glenda Jackson, who embodies Charlotte Corday from head to toe. Just watch the way she connects to the dagger as if it were her long lost friend. The scene is so symbolic of the actual revolt that is dominating the minds of the inmates as the carry on this play.

And then there is that hair-whipping scene between Sade and Corday that just blew my mind.

This is not a film for everyone, for the concept and delivery is far from commercial, and so if you are not a fan of the `arthouse' type films then this is one you may not want to entertain yourself with; but if you do enjoy a film rich with substance, some of which you may have to really uncover personally, then this is a film for you and one I urge you to find and watch. The performances, the direction, the script and lighting; the editing and costumes and makeup and just everything are utter perfection. There is not one sour note here, honestly.