Woo! Or 'enfin', as everyone seems to be saying on Amazon.fr

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Coo-er, they have finally got round to releasing La Revolution Francaise on DVD (region 2) http://www.amazon.fr/revolution-fran%C3%A7aise-partie-2/dp/B001UTVP7M/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t I can't see any time listing there, so I'm assuming it's the shorter(?)French cinema version rather than the TV-series version.

Comments

[josiana.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay. ^^

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

The Other-Customers-Also-Boughts make a pretty interesting selection: "House", "Twilight", "La Boum" ... and "Danton".
Hmm, I'm almost tempted to buy it, having only ever seen it in German (that being, INEXPLICABLY AND INEXCUSABLY, the ONLY available sound track on the [also region 2] German DVD, which has been out for some time). I'm terribly curious to hear whether Klaus Maria Brandauer has an equally heavy Austrian accent in French, because that'd be ... funny. Possibly.

[(Anonymous)]

No, he does not have an accent in the French version. He is dubbed by a French actor. You can check it on youtube where you can find this series (the two films, actually) cut to pieces, too.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

Aww, shame about it. (Well, not technically.) I'd somehow assumed he would have recorded his own dialogue in every language ('every' as in 'English, French and - evidently - the German dub') since he does speak quite a lot of them fluently.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I've got the English-language 4 part TV version (it's a VHS to DVD transfer) which I think is longer, and Brandauer is speaking his own lines in that (I think everyone is, in variously-accented English). Accents are always wrong in period drama anyway: it's only very recently that they've bothered to make accents authentic (the HBO 'John Adams'series had well-researched 18thc 'early American' - i.e., regional rural Southern English accents for Jefferson etc., and 'The Devil's Whore'had a Cromwell with a historically more accurate Cambridgeshire fens accent for the first time (every other 'Cromwell' I've seen has spoken with a 20thc BBC english accent). Generally, though, everyone in period drama speaks posh 'actorish', which means with my bad Franch I can generally understand a period drama in French, but can only get one word in 5 in a modern-set French cop film. If they were going for authenticity, I suppose they should give Napoleon a Corsican accent or have Robespierre speaking with a northern accent , etc.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

I think everyone is, in variously-accented English - oh, how ... bizarre? It seems forgiveable not to pay the utmost attention to regional accents (though it's certainly laudable if it's done, particularly if the standard TV accent simply doesn't fit the dialogue itself in wording and structuring) - it may diminish the historical accuracy but doesn't necessarily distract from otherwise credible and convincing performances (the contrary might even be the case if greater accuracy meant using extreme, hyper-hinterlandish or obsolete dialect that the average audience member - even as a native speaker - is unlikely to be able to follow without making a deliberate effort; similar things go for attempts to portray a lisp or a stammer in a serious way). Not, that is, if the entire cast is indeed brought together in one uniform TV sound - the audience can pretend the camera functions as a Babel fish, focus on the contents and that's that. But to have such an all-over-the-place jumble of accents! And international ones, too - a British-sounding queen and an Austrian-sounding Danton? That can be distracting even to those who don't go in for detail, can't it, especially because on TV one is still so used to hearing everyone speak largely the same unless there's an explicit (stereotypical) point to be made about a person's family origins, class background et cetera.
As I had the 'pleasure' of seeing a version in which (I assume) all major players save Danton and Mirabeau were dubbed by professional TV voices with professionally generic TV accents, Brandauer was the only one that stood out as odd for me, and his distinct Austrian-ness (he didn't do it in dialect, obviously, but the specific colouring is extremely discernible) added something of a comical element. (Okay, I have a terrible definition of 'comical'.)

Haha, I'd love to see a Napoléon with a Corsican accent. Has there ever been one? Stanley Kubrick (who never made the film he planned) reportedly offered the role to Oskar Werner - yet another Austrian! I should point out that I do not, in fact, have anything against Austrians, least of all against Messrs Brandauer and Werner.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I thought the mix of Euro-accents was a bit odd at first, but the drama's so long I got used to it! I think some of the smaller roles may be dubbed in the Eng Lang version, but 'Danton' and 'Robespierre' had their own voices - I think the latter is a Polish actor (he was in Wajda's 'Danton', too), and Peter Ustinov (Mirabeau)was multilingual, so presumably could do his lines in any language under the sun!

[(Anonymous)]

Andrzej Seweryn who plays Robespierre (and who played Bourdon in "Danton") is of Polish origin, but he is actually French.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

That makes sense! (Ustinov is a wonder in this regard, I've never heard him sound anything other than confident and natural in any language or accent. The only complaint I'm tempted to file about him in LRF - well, about his self-dub, that is - is that, while he makes no faux-pas in putting his Mirabeau in any unfitting geographical corner, he sounds at times almost too much like himself, if that makes sense.)

he was in Wajda's 'Danton', too
He was! The world is a disturbingly small place. Or European film is, at any rate.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

What a nightmare...

[(Anonymous)]

I have watched it again recently and it is really a well-made manipulation. Leaving aside all the royalist shit, the parts dealing with the revolutionaries is also extremely manipulative. Whenever there is a "positive" event connected with the participation of the people, Danton and Desmoulins are around, being one with the people of France, meanwhiles Robespierre is cautiously hiding at home. Whenever there is dirty cabinet/parlament politics, Robespierre is there, plotting and manipulating. The invisibilisation of the link between the robespierristes and anything "heroic" is confirmed by no mention of the role some of they played as the "representants en mission". One can accuse Robespierre of many things, but to accuse him of cowardice and lack of contact with the people and popular movements is a big and unnecessary manipulation.
More: Danton and Desmoulins seem very sad when voting for the king's death. Have the authors read Le Vieux Cordelier to have some idea of Desmoulins' verbal enthusiasm for killing? For some reason it was him, not Saint-Just nor Robespierre, who was called The Attorney of the Lanterne, ne c'est pas?
More: Couthon, same as in Wajda's Danton, is shown as an unkind person. He might be guilty of the bloodthirsty Prairial law and it could indeed have been stressed, but according to all sources, on a personal level he was a very kind and polite family-man. It is very medieval to suppose that being disabled in body he had to be bitter and devious in his everyday behaviour.
Well, and no need to point out that the thermidoriens, including Collot and Billaud, are shown as men who are fed up of bloodshed..oh yes. Anyway, all the part that shows the Thermidor events is just horrible: no place for any beautiful gestures - no Le Bas and Augustin asking to share the fate of their colleagues, no Saint-Just attempting at compromise, a semi-empty tumbril instead of the twenty something people executed on the 10th (not mentionning the seventy something the next day), no persecution of the families (Mme. Duplay and Elisabeth Le Bas with her baby are not worth a couple of seconds Lucile had had?)

[(Anonymous)]

You are quite right. I found it strange that they tried to capture everything accurately as much as possible, yet the events of Thermidor were just sort of smushed together. Maybe they were running out of time.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I think they must have decided that people wanted 'personal drama' rather than politics/events, so they concentrated on Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins' relationship: with two of them dead, the drama then hurries up to the end. Hilary Mantel does a similar thing in her novel (only much better), ending it with the execution of the 'Indulgents'. I think this is an increasing tendency in popular history - I don't know if it's a deliberate policy by publishers or film studios, but the concentration is on individual human stories they think we can 'relate' to better, rather than big-stage politics. We seem to have an endless number now of newly published history books about the life of this or that or the other little-known mistress, sister, minor courtier, etc, the other bolyen girl, girl with a pearl earring, the Duchess, Amphibious Thing approach. This week's 'book of the week' on Radio 4 was the life of Napoleon's sister. What next? Robespierre's dog? This wouldn't be a problem if we also got the important stuff - by which I mean the events that had a lasting impact on world history - alongside it, but we don't. We don't get Napoleon, we get his sister, we don't get Fox vs Pitt, Tom Paine or the 1790's political repression of the British Left, we get the Duchess of Devonshire or Beau Brummel. It's amazing that a director as respected as the multi-Oscar Winning Dickie Attenborough has been trying without success for more than 20 years to get a Tom Paine film made, whilst films like The Duchess, Marie Antoinette or about Jefferson's sex life (rather than politics), do get funding.

[(Anonymous)]

You are right. However, even then the political manipulation is there. I understand -though I don't agree with it- that they focus on the sex and family life, and on the personal aspects of the conflict between heroic men. But what I was pointing to is that if one watches the film carefully, one can see that Robespierre is always shown as a "plotting politician", meanwhiles Danton as the "people's man" participating in riots, mass demonstrations...which in France, when "People" and their mass action are so mytified (as they are vilified in the British interpretation of the Fr.Rev) has clear implication in the interpretation of the characters. That is actually a feature of the series I find more dangerous and manipulative that Robespierre's speech moved to 9th Thermidor