Based on the German play, 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, director Peter Brook (1963’s LORD OF THE FLIES) took it from the London stage to the screen using actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The story is set in one room where as the full title states the inmates of the Charenton asylum perform a play directed by the Marquis De Sade.
It is true that De Sade wrote and performed his own plays while in the asylum, which was under the direction of Monsieur Coulmier, who believed that art had a healing effect on the insane. For the film, the actors play inmates playing the roles in the play while a silhouetted audience watch the production from the other side of a set of bars.
The play tells the story of Jean-Paul Marat (Ian Richardson, BRAZIL), who was a key player in the French revolution. Throughout the play, Marat debates the nature, relevance and success of revolution with the nihilistic De Sade (Patrick Magee, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE). A narcoleptic woman plays Charlotte Corday (Glenda Jackson, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY), the woman who assassinates Marat.
The highly intellectual work addresses issues like the endless cycle of poverty, the futility of uprising, the intellectual justification of bloodshed and the fragility of the human individual. In having the inmates performing the play, a chaos and uncertainty hovers over the entire film. The inmates get riled up and break away from their lines and must be calmed down. One scene between “lovers” has the male performer actually chained to the wall, which adds a wonderful satirical underpinning to the entire sequence.
Coulmier (Clifford Rose, WORK IS A 4-LETTER WORD) sometimes breaks up the performance to remind the Marquis that the current segment was supposed to be removed, because the actions of the old rulers, most certainly, do not apply to the current leaders. It’s these subversive moments that make the film so fresh and daring. The play includes a narrator and a four-member chorus, which sings poignant interludes.
Magee creates a cold and methodical De Sade. In performing most of his part in a tub where he was killed, Richardson’s Marat is seen as a revolutionary not in touch with the people he is trying to liberate. Jackson wonderfully brings forth the instability of the inmate into the performance of Corday. Rose brings the perfect touch of smug superiority to his petty dictator of an asylum director.
With the film’s strange setting and tone, the picture takes on a Fellini-esque absurdum, especially with the messy clown make-up of the chorus members. Brooks must be commended to the highest degree for his stellar direction. Virtual a filmed play, the camera-work utilizes perfectly cut together close-ups with bird’s eye view wide shots to draw our eyes to the perfect details at the most powerful and poignant moments. The simple pouring of different colored paints at the right moments take on grand meaning.
The only thing lessening my appreciation of the film is my own ignorance of the history of the French Revolution, yet the topics addressed in the film are still alive today. In a profound way, the issues addressed in this film are as topical today as they were in the 1960s when the film and play debuted as they were fifteen years after the French revolution ended when the Marquis’ play takes place. Truly original and completely unforgettable — it only grows more captivating as the story and message play over in your mind afterward.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
