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revolution_frIn honor of our monthly topic of Saint- Just, I pose the question of how Saint Just should be portrayed in fiction, and what everyone thinks of Saint- Just's representations in fiction.
In the books/movies/animes I've seen:
-Rose of Versailles: Saint- Just is a very pretty blond psychopath who stabs people through the roofs of carriages, wears a mask, and runs around the sewers of Paris. His only real purpose is to show up and threaten innocent royalists/blow things up/otherwise maim, kill, or get his jollies from a massive bloodbath. For some reason I found this Saint-Just to be completely hilarious- mostly, I think, because when the revolutionaries met up Saint-Just would pop up from behind a pew in the church, say something about wanting to kill, then, when he got shot down, hiding back underneath the pew again. Then he outran a carriage. That was pretty sweet. However, there is an awesome Rose of Versailles AMV about Saint- Just.
-A Place of Greater Safety: Here he's handsome, cold, impassioned and rather (in my opinion) juvenile. It's rather negative, overall, but he had his Spartan obsession, he had his military service and his illicit poetry, and he had his earrings (I always feel so saddened when Saint-Just doesn't have his earrings). It seemed very factually correct, if a little bit too negatively interpreted, i.e. Saint- Just didn't like Desmoulins, and thus obviously caused Robespierre to turn on Camille Desmoulins.
-The Scarlet Pimpernel Series: As much as I love The Scarlet Pimpernel and as much of a Sir Percy fangirl I am, I shall be the first to say that the series is rife with historical inaccuracy. Robespierre, after all, continually spouts the wish that all of France had one head so that he may cut it off and appears to keep all important papers of state in his snuff box. Saint- Just gets off really well however. He's hailed as one of the most romantic figures of the period (most likely because the heroine of the series is his cousin), a "fiery young demagogue" who only repeats whatever Robespierre-the-Antichrist tells him to, and a highly intelligent, handsome young man with an air of command. Of course, a few paragraphs later the author will express some desire to see him dead, which sort of cuts short his positive interpretation, but he's overall elegant and eloquent and much more interesting than almost all of the other minor characters.
-Danton: This is the one with Gerard Depardieu. Saint- Just had his earrings (yaaay!) and brought bouquets of flowers to an ill Robespierre, which I thought was wonderful and adorable. Of course, Saint- Just also expresses a wish to kill someone in almost every scene he's in and pouts when Robespierre tells him 'no'. It's really cute in a completely creepy sort of way. I think he's also at Danton's hearing, but I watched the movie too long ago to remember entirely.
-Neil Gaiman's craptastic "Thermidor": Generally, I love Neil Gaiman. His stuff's fantastically creative, fits together perfectly, has a wonderfully engaging narrative, and is well- researched enough to be believable. However, this story in his otherwise great comic series, The Sandman is abysmal. Saint- Just is a cruel, sadistic psychopath who randomly sleeps with an Englishwoman he's known for less than a month (my brain, it asplodes!) and then throws her into jail for no apparent reason (maybe she was just really bad?). I was actually so glad when he just randomly arrested her because I hated that Mary Sue like no one's business. Gaiman has Saint-Just say Danton's famous quote about Liberty and a mattress of corpses, and also makes Saint- Just into some sort of ugly, badly- drawn pervert. Oh, also, a bunch of chopped off heads sing to him and Robespierre (who is inexplicably ugly and fat), which undermines their confidence, and that's why the Jacobins fell.
-Vanity Fair by Thackaray: He's mentioned once, actually, which is why I included his picture and a paragraph on him in my essay on Vanity Fair for English class. He inspires a rich woman with a life-long passion for Frnace. *g*
-A Far Better Rest: This is sort of a published fanfic about A Tale of Two Cities. It's actually really well done and corrects some of the gross historical inaccuracies Dickens so blithely jotted down. Saint- Just is portrayed very sympathetically and very humanly. Sydney Carton (<3) almost befriends him. Saint- Just is handsome, a bit distant, earringed!!, and ultimately a very zealous young man with fierce loyalties.
-The Black Book AKA The Reign of Terror: Saint-Just and Robespierre are once more the Sources of All Evil. This movie includes the famous scene where Saint- Just kicks a kitten. I watched the movie solely for this. Oh, and Couthon's demented and has pet bunnies. But that rather pales in comparison to Saint-Just the Psychopath Who Kicks Kittens Across the Room to Show How Evil He Is. Of course, since the plot revolves around how Robespierre wrote a list of everyone he wants dead in a black book and everyone's now looking for it, one cannot expect much.
Any other books/movies/TV shows/animes? Does anyone have any other opinions on the fictional representations listed here?
In the books/movies/animes I've seen:
-Rose of Versailles: Saint- Just is a very pretty blond psychopath who stabs people through the roofs of carriages, wears a mask, and runs around the sewers of Paris. His only real purpose is to show up and threaten innocent royalists/blow things up/otherwise maim, kill, or get his jollies from a massive bloodbath. For some reason I found this Saint-Just to be completely hilarious- mostly, I think, because when the revolutionaries met up Saint-Just would pop up from behind a pew in the church, say something about wanting to kill, then, when he got shot down, hiding back underneath the pew again. Then he outran a carriage. That was pretty sweet. However, there is an awesome Rose of Versailles AMV about Saint- Just.
-A Place of Greater Safety: Here he's handsome, cold, impassioned and rather (in my opinion) juvenile. It's rather negative, overall, but he had his Spartan obsession, he had his military service and his illicit poetry, and he had his earrings (I always feel so saddened when Saint-Just doesn't have his earrings). It seemed very factually correct, if a little bit too negatively interpreted, i.e. Saint- Just didn't like Desmoulins, and thus obviously caused Robespierre to turn on Camille Desmoulins.
-The Scarlet Pimpernel Series: As much as I love The Scarlet Pimpernel and as much of a Sir Percy fangirl I am, I shall be the first to say that the series is rife with historical inaccuracy. Robespierre, after all, continually spouts the wish that all of France had one head so that he may cut it off and appears to keep all important papers of state in his snuff box. Saint- Just gets off really well however. He's hailed as one of the most romantic figures of the period (most likely because the heroine of the series is his cousin), a "fiery young demagogue" who only repeats whatever Robespierre-the-Antichrist tells him to, and a highly intelligent, handsome young man with an air of command. Of course, a few paragraphs later the author will express some desire to see him dead, which sort of cuts short his positive interpretation, but he's overall elegant and eloquent and much more interesting than almost all of the other minor characters.
-Danton: This is the one with Gerard Depardieu. Saint- Just had his earrings (yaaay!) and brought bouquets of flowers to an ill Robespierre, which I thought was wonderful and adorable. Of course, Saint- Just also expresses a wish to kill someone in almost every scene he's in and pouts when Robespierre tells him 'no'. It's really cute in a completely creepy sort of way. I think he's also at Danton's hearing, but I watched the movie too long ago to remember entirely.
-Neil Gaiman's craptastic "Thermidor": Generally, I love Neil Gaiman. His stuff's fantastically creative, fits together perfectly, has a wonderfully engaging narrative, and is well- researched enough to be believable. However, this story in his otherwise great comic series, The Sandman is abysmal. Saint- Just is a cruel, sadistic psychopath who randomly sleeps with an Englishwoman he's known for less than a month (my brain, it asplodes!) and then throws her into jail for no apparent reason (maybe she was just really bad?). I was actually so glad when he just randomly arrested her because I hated that Mary Sue like no one's business. Gaiman has Saint-Just say Danton's famous quote about Liberty and a mattress of corpses, and also makes Saint- Just into some sort of ugly, badly- drawn pervert. Oh, also, a bunch of chopped off heads sing to him and Robespierre (who is inexplicably ugly and fat), which undermines their confidence, and that's why the Jacobins fell.
-Vanity Fair by Thackaray: He's mentioned once, actually, which is why I included his picture and a paragraph on him in my essay on Vanity Fair for English class. He inspires a rich woman with a life-long passion for Frnace. *g*
-A Far Better Rest: This is sort of a published fanfic about A Tale of Two Cities. It's actually really well done and corrects some of the gross historical inaccuracies Dickens so blithely jotted down. Saint- Just is portrayed very sympathetically and very humanly. Sydney Carton (<3) almost befriends him. Saint- Just is handsome, a bit distant, earringed!!, and ultimately a very zealous young man with fierce loyalties.
-The Black Book AKA The Reign of Terror: Saint-Just and Robespierre are once more the Sources of All Evil. This movie includes the famous scene where Saint- Just kicks a kitten. I watched the movie solely for this. Oh, and Couthon's demented and has pet bunnies. But that rather pales in comparison to Saint-Just the Psychopath Who Kicks Kittens Across the Room to Show How Evil He Is. Of course, since the plot revolves around how Robespierre wrote a list of everyone he wants dead in a black book and everyone's now looking for it, one cannot expect much.
Any other books/movies/TV shows/animes? Does anyone have any other opinions on the fictional representations listed here?
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-11 08:12 pm (UTC)His giving flowers to Maxime in Danton was quite cute, though, I must admit. :x Even if that movie makes me retch overall.
It's been a while since I read it, so my memory is fuzzy, but wasn't Saint-Just in on Le Bas and Babet's Evil Plan to Rid the World of Camille in POGS? Which was...definitely less than accurate? To put it lightly. I really, really disliked the way Saint-Just (not to mention Le Bas and the Duplays) were portrayed in POGS.
Dude. That's the only reason I watched The Black Book AKA The Reign of Terror, too. I skipped over great chunks of the movie just to get to that. Forget wildly inaccurate, it was also freaking BORING. XD
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Date: 2007-08-11 10:33 pm (UTC)I looked at a summary and a few pics from Gaiman's Thermidor and was rather... baffled ^^ So, ugh, it is that bad? :(
...That particular is the only reason I ever would watch The Black Book, though I haven't yet...
In The Gods Are Thirsty (Tanith Lee) he's... blond, cold, fanatical Robespierre fanboy with serious issues. It's quite flattering... if you consider that it's Camille's PoV. He and Camille insult each other, which is fun.
Then there's Stanislawa Przybyszewska, especially Thermidor, which I found in the library a couple years ago and woefully also can't remember wonderfully well... But yes, being very pro-Robespierre we get quite a lot of favourably portrayed Saint-Just too. He is also stunningly pretty. I'm sure
*can't believe how much she fails at html* apologies for spamming the post!
So, here comes my opinion on the bad fictional representations... In fact, more like a rant.
Date: 2007-08-11 11:38 pm (UTC)Gaiman: What I find immensely irritating is, beyond the obviously hideous portrayal and representation, that he explains his need to bash the French Revolution through the false belief that the French Republic -- lead by ebil!tyrannical!Robespierre -- wanted to destroy History and start over to Year 0 with the revolutionary calendar. First, they never wished to "destroy History" -- or explain the references and role-modeling after Antiquity -- and the desire to "start over" is not different from what the entire Modern Era did. The Renaissance (rebirth, per se) decided that the Middle Ages were dark centuries which had to be forgotten, the Protestant Reform decided that the Church wasn't respecting the teachings of the "Primitive Church" and since it refused to change, they decided to start over, and the Puritan pilgrims left England to found in America a "New Jerusalem", a "New Eden". I don't understand why, when the French decide to do the same sort of thing, to put an end to a corrupted, antiquated and unfair system like the Ancien Régime, to criticise the Catholic Church who went astray, it's considered to be "omg!ebil". Second, I don't understand why, in Gaiman's mind, it's Robespierre and Saint-Just who have to pay for the creation of the revolutionary calendar. It's Romme who conceived it and Fabre d'Églantine who added the "poetic details". I don't see Gaiman writing a cheerful, vindicative story on the apparently "righteous" ends of Fabre d'Églantine being guillotined with the dantonistes or Romme stabbing himself after he was condemned by the Convention thermidorienne for taking part in the insurrection of Prairial Year III. And first of all, Robespierre didn't entirely agree with the revolutionary calendar, since it was the result of dechristianisation and would mess up with the people's habits, and we all know that Robespierre was against these brusque methods (Soboul: Gilbert Romme et son temps, 1965). So, really, Gaiman's story is an unfair, disparaging abomination. The irrational fury animating some against the French Revolution is just not normal.
Wajda: I watched that movie torn inside with suffering. Saint-Just looks completely psychotic, grinning like a madman all the time because "omg!we're going to kill people!yayz!"... or going theatrically furious and burning his hat. That movie 1) is badly acted (I laughed with despair); 2) has hideous music (was that a horror film or historical drama?) 3) serves as Wajda's therapy for his childhood traumatism caused by the sovietic regime in Poland. No matter how much I understand he suffered and the sovietic regime was bad, what the fuck does that have to do with the French Revolution? It's completely irrational. And on top of it, Wajda makes his point that the French Revolution = Sovietic Totalitarism through twisting historical facts into lies. Bravo for the lesson.
Mantel: Yet another one who has issues. Seriously. I'm planning to write an open letter to her -- at some point -- asking her why the hell she thought it would be an interesting and appropriate literary device to turn Élisabeth "Babet" Le Bas into a bimbo slut, her husband into a bastard, and all of this to serve Saint-Just the Incarnation of Evil (TM)'s ebil plan against poor, innocent, poodle-like Desmoulins. Seriously, they had better things to do than that. And the trick to make women look ebil by turning them into irritating, dumb sluts is so very cheap.
As for the others, I don't understand why they turn Saint-Just so often into a psychopatic blonde (when it's not a psychopatic black-haired, like in Schama's ridiculous rambling he calls "historical work") and I really do wish that the Japanese hadn't gotten involved too in the messing of the French Revolution. The Anglo-Saxons, the random Polish and the French themselves were doing that quite well already.
Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-11 11:39 pm (UTC)Enrico's La Révolution française: It's funny because I precisely just wrote a short bashing on it. So I'll just start again. :P
Very irritating and disappointing. At first, I admit I squeed on it and thought it was nice. It's just when I read further that I realised that film was completely hypocritical. The movie is insidious, that's possibly the worst. It makes you believe it "could" be neutral, while it's frankly dantoniste, with a slight royalist tendency. Everything is "relatively accurate", apart from everything robespierriste and, naturally, the end, where they combine 8-9-10 thermidor all together. It's a very bad thing, you see: instead of being imprisonned right away on 9 thermidor and having the Commune insurrect and free them, they magically run away from the Convention (even if you hear a guy asking for their arrestation) and go directly to the Hôtel de Ville -- so, yes, it looks like they actually "conspired" against the Republic to take power liek woah (talk about the promotion of Thermidorian propaganda). And to stop the movie with Thermidor is an insult: the French Revolution continues until 1799. From that movie, you get the feeling everything went nicely after, because they executed the ebil Robespierre and Saint-Just. My ass. At the very least, they could have continued to show the horrors promoted by the Convention thermidorienne, or the end of the popular movements with the insurrection of Prairial. But, no. To come back on Saint-Just: he doesn't say his last speech (the one that is interrupted), which is bad, and he just looks like a sort of disciple/enraged dog to Robespierre. The movie is similar to Mantel's: "It wasn't really Robespierre's fault, he was okay when he was with Camille, until he was mind!corrupted by ebil!pretty!Saint-Just." Right.... that, and the fact you see Saint-Just's head falling in the basket. From a certain distance and from Robespierre's POV naturally, but this is still disgusting and I'm not ready to forgive them that. I demand revenge. D:<
Przybyszewska: Polish robespierriste and communist writer of the early 20th century. Wajda based his film on her play, "The Danton Case", to write something anti-communist and anti-robespierriste. Go, figure. The sad thing with her is that she was robespierriste and good-willed, but her plays really suck as far as political analysis and characterisation are concerned. For an easy example, Robespierre is mystically insightful and Saint-Just says that he considers himself to be "unequal". It's very... um... disturbing and it just doesn't work. It's very different from the usual, but still not very good.
Overall, the big problem is that Saint-Just is pratically always only portrayed as the Pretty Brooding Asshole (TM). Which I am ready to admit that he sometimes was. But he wasn't only that: it's completely uni-dimensional. They see him as some sort of fiction villain, instead of seeing him with a real human and yes, contradictory, personality. He's not an archetype of evil, no more than an iceberg, Lucifer (Hampson) or an "exterminating angel" (Gueniffey). Also, nobody focusses on his democratic work at all. They only speak of the Terror, Terror this, Terror that, Revolutionary government, Ebilness, Violence, Heads Rolling!OMG. Nobody ever mentions the Constitution of 1793, or his political ideals and the Institutions républicaines.
...okay, I'm done ranting now. ^^; I'll try to come up with something actually positive later.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 04:23 am (UTC)Pierre Cardinal's "Saint-Just et la force des choses" (1972) - "Saint-Just and the Force of Circumstances" with Patrice Alexsandre as Saint-Just and Pierre Vanec as Robespierre. IMHO it is one of the best movies about French Revolution, and it definitely is the best known "silver-screen portraits" of Sain-Just.
The film is based on the novel by Albert Olivier and has two parts, "The Victory" and "The Death". The message is:
- The Great Force of Circumstances leads one to the absolutely unpredictable results, so it prevented Saint-Just from doing a good half of all the good things he had been dreaming of.
- Saint-Just starts his career as "Robespierre's student", but very soon he becomes independent. By the Thermidor the two politicians have almost nothing in common... Nothing but the death, yes.
To put it short, the movie answers the very simple question: "Why Saint-Just choose to die side by side with Robespierre?"
Personally, I like the movie very much. Nothing and nobody is uni-dimensional there! ;) Real history, real people, real 3D.
some screen-shots (http://antoine-saint-just.narod.ru/photos.html)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 05:44 am (UTC)...and because I'm curious: what's the answer they chose?
Corrected ;)
Date: 2007-08-12 07:17 am (UTC)Neither do I. :) But I like his acting.
Acting is so good that it seems just "comme il faut" to forgive Patrice Alexsandre for his a little bit too good looks...
"what's the answer they chose?"
They didn't make it clear, as the matter of fact... Anyway, I got it like that: Saint-Just accepted his own "rights for execution", because he failed his mission, he could not built his "Respublic of Love, Virtue and Happiness" - and admitted it.
But all the hints are too subtle to get them matter-of-factly and plainly.
The film presents loads of "history raw material", so to say, "history live" - real speeches, real dialogues, sceens reconstructed from Barrer's and Vadier's and Gauteau's memoires - so it seems that one is invited to find one's own answer to the question and find one's own "why's".
And it is very honest way to present history in a movie, I believe.
At least, it's much more fruitful thing to do than
kicking kittensinventing some more ominous symptoms for Saint-Just's (hypothetical) psychopathology! ;);)Re: So, here comes my opinion on the bad fictional representations... In fact, more like a rant.
Date: 2007-08-12 07:22 am (UTC)Bravo!
:lol:
Re: Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-12 07:43 am (UTC)You know, the first part wasn't bad at all!
I think, it is historically correct and well displayed... Up to the 10th August I've been watching peacfully.
But after that... That stupid idea of blending Thermidor 8+9 together...
It ends up as a very, very unhealthy drink!
The final diagnosis is "to dogs!!!", of course. but I'm afraid ASPCA will object that.
..the big problem..
Date: 2007-08-12 08:27 am (UTC)Unfortunately, Saint-Just is rarely seen as a personality, I think, authors are accustomed to use him as a stylistic device, sort of - to make "revolutionary atmosphere" in their novels/movies satisfyingly intolerable.
The message is, as a rule, simple: "Revolution - BAD, _Terror this_, _Terror that_, _Violence_, _Heads Rolling_, _Add your own_".
What do we need to imprint the message deeper? Correct, we need a Pretty Brooding Asshole, PBA (TM). And why on earth bother searching for PBA, or writing a PBA-Harry-Stu?
Saint-Just is inexplicably good as one for more than 200 years already!
* * *
It is sad, of course...
Re: Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-12 01:04 pm (UTC)...and I don't forgive that they skipped his last speech, nor that they show his head falling. >:(
Re: Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-12 01:31 pm (UTC)And you should seriously consider this, er-r, renaming thing! ;) It would be a sort of saint-justice, I'd say.
Re: Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-12 01:44 pm (UTC)Re: ..the big problem..
Date: 2007-08-12 01:46 pm (UTC)PBA -- sounds like a good way to shorten it. XD
Re: Corrected ;)
Date: 2007-08-12 02:24 pm (UTC)Sounds like a good answer too. Pretty much the way I see it, Thermidor being the obvious sign of the failure of the "Republic of Friendship"... And "history raw material" is nice. :D
Re: ..the big problem..
Date: 2007-08-12 10:32 pm (UTC)Definitely. :)
People do like being irrational - and sadly addicted to intellectual fastfood, too. Alas.
Re: Ranting - Part II
Date: 2007-08-12 10:42 pm (UTC)It was a wise one!
But its preamble matched Robespierre's Thermidor 8th too much, and there was too much fear those days... Just enough fear for "interrupting bastards"!
Re: Corrected ;)
Date: 2007-08-12 11:19 pm (UTC)Right!
For those who fond of processing, cooking and, sometimes, thinking:Dno subject
Date: 2007-08-13 09:08 pm (UTC)Movies: There's Goddard's Le Weekend/Week End in which S-J makes a cameo appearance I posted stills from a few entries back, and Abel Gance's Napoleon. I've never seen the second one yet. Does anyone know where I can get a DVD or VHS (USA version) tape of the full length version--not the mutilated Francis Ford Coppola version?
Books: I really *dislike* most fiction written before 1980 b/c I'm a pretentious asshole, so the few frenchrev fiction books I own, I have by accident, i.e. they were cheap.
I have, but only skimmed over, Marjorie Corwyn's The Incorruptible *cough, cough* [insert vomiting noises here] *cough, cough*, and the novelised play Robespierre by Victorien Sardou. More crap.
My Friend Robespierre by Henri Beraud is a rather sympathic, and at points strangely moving, novel written in the first person. (Ihave the english version. It's always really expensive ($40+) on ebay, but amazon has it for less than $10. I think I paid around $8 for my copy, s&h included.) The narrator is an anonymous childhood friend of Robespierre who closely follows him throughout the Revolution. There's a pretty slashy scene between S-J and Robes., which *I think* is based on fact/historical hearsay.
Re: So, here comes my opinion on the bad fictional representations... In fact, more like a rant.
Date: 2007-08-14 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 05:00 am (UTC)Black Book AKA Reign of Terror
Date: 2007-08-21 08:06 pm (UTC)The secret speakeasy that Saint-Just was at was hillarious. What era was this suposed to be? The 20's!? And they BUTCHERED everyone's names. Marie Anttenet!? They pronounced Danton like some town in Ohio! And I'm pretty sure that somone called Fouche Fou-chee.
Barras was described as a "virtueous man who wanted to save his country" Tallain: "another virtueous man". I think the actor playing Saint-Just usully did cowboy films, cause his first lines were (You have to say them with a thick John Wayne accent): "My name is Saint-Just, wherever Robespierre goes, I go." I almost died laughing.
Re: Black Book AKA Reign of Terror
Date: 2007-08-22 12:53 am (UTC)That...is EXACTLY what I thought when I heard them say it. XDDD
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:26 am (UTC)...do you think you can type and/or describe the scene?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 06:19 pm (UTC)I hate hate hate that Gaiman's Thermidor. It's unaesthetic, Saint-Just looks ugly, the story is complete nonsense and that it's mixed with some supernatural stuff really makes me angry.