The Marseillaise
The Marseillaise is a panaroma-like, patriotic film fresco by Jean Renoir set at the time of the French Revolution . The extensive cast is led by the director's brother, Pierre Renoir , in the role of King Louis XVI. and by Louis Jouvet .
action
In individual episodes - from the point of view of the common people as well as that of the rulers - the film tries to recreate those events that were central components of the French Revolution (1789) and its political, military and social consequences (until 1792). After the Bastille was stormed , this worrying news also reached the royal palace in Versailles . Louis XVI himself is initially not yet aware of the scope and continues his splendid lifestyle far from any sense of reality. Things are taking their course, and a number of revolutionary men set out from Marseille to Paris to take part in the upheavals that have gripped the whole country.
On August 10, 1792, the Tuileries were attacked by rebellious sections of the population with the support of the revolutionary city government of Paris and those of the Marseilles that had already been introduced. Louis XVI is forced to flee to the Legislative National Assembly , the French aristocracy loses its remaining rights. In Koblenz, numerous aristocratic exiles set up an army of emigrants to overthrow the revolutionaries at home in France, but their plan fails. At the cannonade of Valmy September 20, 1792, the intervention troops suffered a decisive defeat. Renoir's perspective on them is of “ Stroheim cruelty”, as Sadoul writes, while the “little people” are granted significantly more sympathy by the director, for example when a simple representative of the people, a knitter, passionately expressing the people's opinion in a club meeting leaves.
Production notes
La Marseillaise , so the original title, was made in the summer and autumn of 1937 - studio recordings in Billancourt, exterior recordings in Fontainebleau, Alsace, Antibes, Haute Provence and on the Place du Panthéon in Paris - and celebrated his on February 2, 1938 in Paris World premiere. In Germany, La Marseillaise was shown for the first time as the original with subtitles on April 23, 1979 in the third program of WDR television.
The film structures were created by Georges Wakhévitch , Léon Barsacq and Jean Perrier . Coco Chanel designed the costumes for Queen Marie-Antoinette, the Louis Granier fashion house provided the remaining costumes. The assistant directors included Jacques Becker , Claude Renoir and Jean-Paul Le Chanois . André Zwobada and André Seigneur took over the production management.
Reviews
Sadoul's History of Cinematography stated: “This film has been attacked for reasons often more political than artistic. It is not a completely successful work. But it has very beautiful spots. (...) The most sinful thing was in the dramatic structure of the film. August 10th should have remained a stage because Valmy, where the armies of foreign countries and emigrants were defeated, gave the Marseillaise its meaning ... ”.
Bucher's Encyclopedia of Film called the film a “collectively funded tribute to the popular movement”.
In the Lexicon of International Films it says: “Jean Renoir combines a reconstruction of individual historical events that is precise and coherent down to the smallest detail with fictional scenes that could have happened that way. In contrast to the pathetic, emotionalizing heroic epic, the film assigns the camera the role of a reporter who explains the events. A film that has remained fresh in terms of structure and narrative, and whose question of the subject of political action remains topical. "
"Renoir opted for a humanistic approach to history in order to avoid what he felt was the false solemnity of most historical epics."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Georges Sadoul : History of Film Art, Vienna 1957, p. 274.
- ↑ ibid.
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 642.
- ↑ The Marseillaise. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 9, 2018 .
Web links
- The Marseillaise in the Internet Movie Database (English)