Poor Bitos

[pedrolino.livejournal.com]

Has anyone read Poor Bitos by Jean Anouilh? It's a really interesting play (or at least I thought so) about a revolution-themed costume party, but which ends up going back in time to show several scenes from the months leading up to Thermidor as well. While Robespierre certainly starts off as being villainized, I found it much more ambiguous by the end, especially considering that pretty much everyone else comes off looking like a complete jerk at the end, as well.

Anouilh deals somewhat loosely with the historical specifics-- implications that Robespierre was in love with Lucile Duplessis, etc-- but I still think it's a really interesting piece. Has anyone else read it, and what did you think?

Comments

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I really don't like it at all. Structurally, it's interesting: I'd like to try and do a counter-play to it, but politically it's horrible. It was said at the time that it outraged left and right, but I don't think the right have too much to complain about here. It basically makes out that Robespierre's politics and the Terror (which is - of course- entirely Robespierre's doing) were driven buy a personal sense of sexual inadequacy and class envy(pause while I bang my head against a wall).

Even the contemporary politics behind it are horrible. Bitos is portrayed as a hateful, intolerant character because he has sentenced a Nazi collaborator to death, despite the fact that the collaborator was an acquaintance. We are supposed to draw a parallel with Desmoulins, which is an insult to Desmoulins, apart from anything else. Presumably, Anouilh believed that the death penalty - still legal in France right up till 1981, I think, shouldn't be applied to Nazi collaborators who caused the deaths of their own countrymen - or, which is worse, that Bitos should have bent the law and let the guy off because he was an acquaintance! Is that how the judicial system is supposed to work, and should a man be condemned for harshness because he sentences people according to the law of the land !?

Robespierre had had a slight period of rehabilitation (huh, not enough for a statue, though!) - this was from the period that saw the start of the backlash, and I think, judging by this play, it was very much tied into feelings of discomfort with notions of political purity in sections of the postwar generation, some of whom did not exactly have a distinguished war record. In 1958 the French regime publicly refused to commemorate Robespierre's 200th anniversary. It was probably more comfortable for the right/establishment to think, and claim, that left-wing politicians were motivated by sexual inadequacy or class envy rather than idealism (though I've always thought that if Robespierre had swanned around with whores like Danton did, he'd have a statue in Paris, too!).

Um. Anyway, it's a while since I read it, and I'm interested in hearing arguments that would defend it - I personally didn't see how it would offend the right, though: they are portrayed as socially cruel at a dinner party, but right wing people wouldn't mind that! I know a lot of people on this site hate Wajda's 'Danton', but I actually like Wajda's film - I think it's more subtle and ambiguous than some on the left claim (and, as you've probably guessed, I'm on the left, though not of the Mathiez Robespierre-was-perfect school, even though he is my alltime favourite dead Frenchman (my favourite live one is Joann Sfar!)): I don't get much sense of ambiguity in 'Poor Bitos', though - it just seems to be a way of giving Robespierre and by extension, the left, a good kicking. Maybe I should go back and read it again and try not to get angry!

[pedrolino.livejournal.com]

It could be that I misinterpreted it, but I did come out feeling sorry for Bitos, and I guess Robespierre by extension. I mean, of course it wasn't very flattering to Robespierre, but I think there was a part of it that wasn't entirely against Bitos' ideological purity. Of course he comes across as awful, but we're seeing it through the eyes and hearing it through the lips of the other characters, and they, frankly, aren't very nice people. I find it hard to believe that Anouilh would be asking us to sympathize entirely with them. But this point of view might be colored (and possibly inaccurately) by his other works I've read, which come out so strongly on the side of those who stand by their beliefs and judge hypocrisy so harshly.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I agree that you end up feeling sorry for Bitos, as he stands there feeling and looking like an idiot with his split trousers, but that's not the same as feeling political sympathy, as I read it - more like feeling pity for something wounded. It's the playwright, rather than the other characters, that have him standing there with split trousers - the political threat is defused by being reduced to farce.
I was thinking about the play a couple of days ago, because the film 'Night of the Generals' was on, with Donald Pleasance and Charles Gray, who were the two leads in the London production of Poor Bitos in the 60's. Gray - the aristocrat - never played sympathetic roles, though Pleasance (Bitos) seemed to alternate between sinister (Blofeld, various nazis, etc.) and pathetic (as in The Great Escape)- from that point of view, I would guess that in the London production, neither side came off well...I have a cartoon from the cover ofthe programe, somewhere - I might try posting it tomorrow if I can get lj to accept pics, but it's nearly 2am here now!

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Wajda's Danton is rather ambiguous, yes, but some of the characterizations are just... sort of bizzarely extrapolated from history. Yes, Saint-Just was young and passionate, but I'm not sure how that translates into being sulky and tearing down posters. I did like their Robespierre though- he was controlled, calm, and tried with remarkable patience to work with Danton.

Going back to the sexual inadequacy + class issues = THE TERROR issue, my problem was that the film did play into that whole mythos. Danton is always seen as masculine. He pals around with whores, he is dynamic, vitalic, vivacious- and Robespierre is ill and stuck in rather homoerotic settings quite at varience with Danton's heteronormative passions. Danton wakled off with whores before a debate, Robespierre goes to David's studio, where there are lots of naked men sitting around for no apparent reason; Danton flirts with Lucille, Robespierre frightens Lucille and Horace into incoherence and screams, respectively, etc. Though Wajda managed to set up the dichotomy between Robespierre and Danton and to establish their contrasting characters very well, my main issue is that that dichotomy sort of discintigrated into Danton upholding the apparently unquestionably good heteronormative way of the right and Robespierre stuck in cliche sexual disfunction/oh no, scary homosexual land and ultimately causing the destruction of the old world (Danton) and the new world (himself) through his own director-emphasized limitations. It would have been a much stronger story if Wajda had focused on the ideological principles that so seperated them, since I think that's more historically accurate and much more interesting, rather than wandering off into Karl Rove-ian scare-tactic land.

tl;dr- I think the film had some good points that weren't entirely drowned out by the 80s horror movie soundtrack and overly simplistic historical interpretations.

... Sorry that was so off topic, but you made me think, so thank you. <3

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

The 'class envy' issue that applies to Poor Bitos doesn't apply to Wajda's Danton, but the sexuality issue does, though in a different way - as far as I can remember, Wajda has cut the more 'physical' scenes with Eleonore Duplay that were in the original play The Danton Affair: Przbyszewska's Robespierre is more bisexual/female, but in her play this is a 'good' thing, and surprisingly, I thought a bit of that survived in Wajda's film, in the scenes between Robespierre and Desmoulins. The accusation that Robespierre was so nasty he killed his best friend isn't the view portrayed here, and the film includes his sister's story that Robespierre visited the prison - Desmoulins' chance of freedom here shown as being destroyed by Danton + co's drunken laddish bravado.
I don't think Danton is unequivocally 'good': he sends his friends off to the convention hall while he sits outside with a glass of wine. In the crucial meeting, he gets drunk, to the horror of his friends, screws up, then goes off whoring when he should be trying to save the situation, effectively condemning them all to death. He is clearly corrupt, living grandly and dining grandly in a city of bread queues, in contrast to Robespierre's frugality - the latter lives like any other citizen, while Danton lives like a king. During the dinner, Danton asks Robespierre - 'what do you want?' - Robespierre replies something about human happiness, welfare of the Republic etc. - to which Danton replies, no, what do you really want - meaning power, gold, sex - Robespierre is horrified, and his line that he had been mistaken about Danton seems justified by what he's just seen and heard. The film also reminds us that the man of the 10th August was also the man of September and part-author of the Terror - when in prison, Danton expects an embrace from a fellow prisoner, only to find he's rejoicing that Danton will die. Sexually, too, while Danton greets whores joyfully, his own wife, looking like a child bride, looks scared of him: so, whilst Robespierre's home life seems grey and sickly, so, in a different way, does Danton's. He is also portrayed as planning an armed coup - I don't think the historical record justifies that, but in the film that would justify his trial and execution.

Sorry, that's very long-winded! There are many things in the film I can't stand (notably the framing device with the small Duplay boy learning his revolutionary catechism, Wajda's invention, not from the play, and not exactly subtle) but I don't think the interpretation that was given it at the time - Danton =Walesa= the West=good, Robespierre=Jaruselski=the east=bad, is that clear cut (I don't think Walesa would like to think he was seen as someone who ate magnificent stuffed fish while the people queued for bread, for example).

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

The ironic thing about your appraisal of Danton's portrayal in that film is that Wajda's Danton only really looks bad to someone who believes in principles and the public good and incorruptibility--someone, that is, like Robespierre. But the whole point of the film, it seems to me, is that Danton is exonerated, because the faults attributed to Danton--such as they are (it's not clear that Wajda necessarily views some of them, Danton's excess, for example, as negative)--are "human," where as those attributed to Robespierre are supposedly not...

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, yes, it's ambiguous, but only from the point of view of ideology and principles (and then only for those who know enough about the Revolution to recognize them)--from the point of view of the mood the film sets and the filmmakers' intent it's incredibly and unsubtly biased, if not always necessarily *for* Danton, then certainly at least *against* Robespierre.

And I had a huge problem with the way other Robespierristes and the members of the CSP were portrayed. And with all the falsifications done expressly to make Robespierre look bad. Plus, just personally, I would have loved to see Éléonore portrayed as she was in the original play. Her character, along with Saint-Just's, was probably the most distorted of the entire film.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

That's funny - I was talking about this with someone last night, after a comment made on the radio about the upcoming 1640's drama. It also seems to be the case looking at the comments under the youtube clips from 'Danton' - some are 'yay Robespierre', others are of the 'jesus, this is scary' POV. I'm very conscious that male writers, historians - hell, probably 'men' in general, like Danton: that comment in Mark Steel from the French MP in 1989 - 'I like a man who screws', and really don't like Robespierre on a quite visceral level - and of course use 'womanish' etc as a term of abuse.

So, yes, I suspect a lot of male viewers, maybe especially in France where political corruption, infedelity and prostitution are more culturally acceptable, may be going 'go Danton!' when he gets pissed and staggers off with a couple of prossies: that's 'manly', that's 'human', that's 'natural'. I don't know how Poles viewed it - I'd imagine with a stronger cultural revulsion against any implied homosexuality, though with more empathy with bread queues and less for Danton's sumptuous corrupt lifestyle. Then again, there seems to be respect for Przbyszewska now (if my brother's Polish ex-girlfriend is in any way representative!). Watching it as a British woman from I suppose a puritan/protestant tradition though, my sympathies were all with Robespierre and the 'realpolitic' of the govt - specially as, as coming from Liverpool, we 've had a number of politicians posing as loud, left wing men of the people who have been corruptly acquiring vast fortunes behind the scenes!

On the CSP, they are portrayed as a bunch of freaks, though I think Wajda credits the viewer with having good historical knowledge, and as such, whilst I think the average British viewer would see them as Robespierre's 'gang', I think the animosity between them does come across. I think that's a crucial point, though, about historical knowledge: I watch this film as yet another artist's 'take' on an idealogical/human struggle, a counter-play to Stani, who in turn did her counter-play to Buchner, much in the same way I would watch Antony and Cleopatra as an artist using historical characters as something to 'riff' from. However, it's now being watched (in schools etc) as 'fact': that's a shame - it would be much better viewed in a class alongside a series of films on revolutions - putting Battleship Potemkin next to Animal Farm, this next to Orphans of the Storm or Napoleon or Carry On Don't Lose Your Head, in a discussion of how artists use history to make political , propaganda or cultural points.

The blurb on the British poster was depressing - something along the lines of France is suffering under Robespierre's Terror - only one man can save them! - that sort of thing, and I doubt even Wajda would have given that line the seal of approval: he's generally a more subtle film-maker than that (though not in the closing scene!). Nevertheless, the film was a surprise in the general run of Revolution films, in which Robespierre is usually just a bizarre cartoon demon from hell - I can really only think of the Terreur et Vertu films when it comes to films that make him even remotely human - and I've read somewhere that that tv series was reportedly axed because it was seen as left-wing.

On a similar theme, really, there's a tv series starting tomorrow on the radical left of the 1640's, and the reporting on that has been interesting - I posted a couple of days ago about the way the various papers of various political bents have reported it. What is very telling is that it is a period that has been criminally - deliberately - neglected: this series took 14 years to get made - the BBC suddenly changed their mind on it, funny, that! Someone reviewing it on the radio, complained 'I didn't like it, because I didn't know who to support' , and there was something of that in the 'Cromwell' film of the 1960's - I thought it was basically pro-Cromwell, but I've read reviews that bleat on about Alec Guiness's lovely gentle human king Charles and Cromwell's repellant puritanism. Well, now we have a £7 million series in which the heroes are reportedly the hardcore puritan left - it'll be interesting to see the public reaction! (it'll probably be 'poor king charles' all over again)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

As an aside, I always find it funny that they assume because Robespierre never married and was discreet about his personal life, he never had sex. The argument being that there's no "proof"--but when is there ever positive proof, unless a man has children (and even the then the children must resemble him)? It seems a bit ridiculous. What kind of proof are they looking for?... Perhaps a better way of phrasing that comment would be, "I like a man who screws publically," though I've never personally understood why that would be desirable.

I don't know if they'd necessarily be saying "Go Danton!" but those aren't the kind of faults a lot of men - and certainly not just in France - would blame him for either, unfortunately. In any case, one's point of view is bound to be radically different if one knows anything about the period, whatever country one is from. You can't put too much weight on cultural assumptions there. Moreover, the French left (and I think they were quite right in this) thought much less of the film than even you do, and they can hardly be accused of being raised in a Puritan tradition.

There are many members of the CSP I don't like, but even the worst of them don't deserve the kind of treatment they get in Danton. Whether they're portrayed as Robespierre's friends or enemies is immaterial--even as enemies they would make more worthy adversaries if they were portrayed more accurately.

I agree that Danton should never be used in any classroom except in the context of discussion of the use of history as propaganda. The trouble is, such a class would probably use portrayals of the Revolution that were trying to be as accurate as possible (La Marseillaise, LTeLV) as an example of counter-propaganda just because they're left-wing, when they really shouldn't be put in the same category at all. I mean, it really doesn't matter what the message is: there's no comparing a film where the filmmakers are doing their utmost to make good use of primary sources and a film where the filmmakers are deliberately making things up and distorting the sources they do use to make their point.

The British view of the Revolution is so completely unrelated to anything even slightly historical that Danton was bound to look good in comparison. Those posters just prove my point. That doesn't mean anything from an objective viewpoint though. I guess it wouldn't piss me off so much if the left had enough funding to make a rebuttal on more than a 20:1 basis--because, as I'm sure you've noticed, the right can easily make at least 20 films for every film the left can make. I should clarify for the benefit of anyone out there reading this that I don't want Danton censored--I'm for free speech, *real* free speech, not free speech for those with money and effective censorship for those without.

But there--and you won't find this surprising--I'm with Robespierre, and "like Cromwell no better than Charles I," though even with my relatively limited knowledge of British history I'm sick of portrayals of evil Puritans vs. glamorous royalists. But then, I'm sick of any portrayals of royalists as heroes or innocent victims just generally.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've read some of the pieces by French leftists on the film: most of the criticism was valid, though (and again, maybe it's the 'male' thing!) some seemed to think 'Danton' was portrayed as whiter-than-white, whch I really don't feel was the case. Also, I remember one objecting to Saint-Just's earring! A few years later, and if anything the film looked more dubious in its Polish/French casting, because there was (well, seemed to me to be) an effort to prevent the bicentennial being used as a rallying point for the left, and coupled with the use of a Polish pope to drive a wedge into the communist bloc - he acually beatified 99 Vendée 'martyrs', according to History Today (writing in 1989) - which does look incredibly suspicious!

On Cromwell, what's great about the upcoming Tv Series is that it is centering on the radical left - the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters, and attacking Cromwell from the left for betraying them. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling the French Revolutionaries were reared on a somewhat'Thermidorian' view of British history here, because, oppressor though he became, the Cromwell regime for much of its existence was still more radical than anything else of the period, and he's still hated by the right. Most film and tv series have the cavaliers as the goodies: the 1960's Cromwell film, historical travesty though it was, nevertheless had the cavaliers as a bunch of nasty, treacherous upper class twits.

I suppose, basically, my expectations are so low when it comes to seeing revolutionaries - of any era - portrayed on screen I'm happy with half a loaf, even a quarter of a loaf! If a writer as well respected as peter Flannery took 14 years to get his Levellers project off the ground, and Lord - as I think he now is - Attenborough, national treasure, has been sitting on his pet project, a Tom Paine script, for 20 years (no, Robespierre doesn't come out well in it!) - then I don't hold out much hope for anything that gives the Jacobins a fair crack of the whip. Who knows, though, the world political situation is changing daily!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Danton is always seen as masculine.
Mona Ozouf must really have liked Wajda's film because in the biographical article she writes on Danton in the Dictionnaire critique de la Révolution française, she takes back the list of polarized characterists of Danton and Robespierre, including "one is masculine" and "the other is feminine".

Since I'm presently reading texts on gender history for my epistemology seminar, I'm going to pimp what I learned yesterday: the inferior classes/races were typically 'feminized' by the elite/whites, for example in the 19th century. Interesting, isn't it?

It would have been a much stronger story if Wajda had focused on the ideological principles that so seperated them, since I think that's more historically accurate and much more interesting
I don't think Wajda was so much interested with that: principles are difficult to explain to an audience, while contrasting personalities and sexualities... ah.


Yeah, I hate the film too; it had made me sick for a couple of days after watching it.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I read "Pauvre Bitos" a couple of years ago, and from what I remember of it, I second your sentiments on it entirely. Anouillh portrays the whole Revolution as petty, pathetic, and based on Robespierre's supposed psycho-sexual issues. The memory of it alone makes me shudder.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's that line that goes something like :"we paid dearly for your complexes"!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* Yes, I remember that line.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

The whole thing about sexual frustrations was very 'well' 'theorized' by Emmanuel Tood in his 'essay' Le Fou et le Prolétaire (1979), who rambles that the petits bourgeois naturally support totalitarian regimes (sic) such as those of 1793 (sic), 1848 (sic), 1917 (sic) and 1933 (the nazis, of course), because petits bourgeois are a sexually and socially frustrated class, because they're morbid, suicidal, alcoholic, schizophrenic and sado-masochistic. Also, that they constitute a class of madness. To say that the whole thing is quite common... I think it was also quite developed by H. Taine, who loved to ramble on the madness of the People in general. It's a theme.

It doesn't really bring up anything to the whole debate, but since I read about it recently...