revolution_fr | That programme's just been on...

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That programme's just been on...

As in" "Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution" BBC2. Review . (I put that word in in the hope a random googler will stumble here...) Let's put it this way: it uses scenes from "Orphans of the Storm' like documentary footage. It intercuts images of Pol Pot, Stalin, Khomeni (oddly, not of Israel, a threatened democracy, surrounded by enemies, that uses violence to protect itself, and of which Simon Schama is a staunch supporter!!!!) with the acted bits. The CSP only seems to have 6 members - no mention of General Security. Carnot is the voice of reason, and Collot the bloodthirty one with a working class accent to denote cruelty (think Danny the Drug Dealer in Withnail and I, or the Cockney Orcs in LOTR) - though of course, Collot's role in Thermidor isn't mentioned: that wouldn't fit with the story the BBC are telling, you know, where Thermidor is the spontaneous overthrow of a cruel dictator (cue death to the tyrant type images from Gance's"Napoleon') - Fouché, Fréron, Tallien, Billaud and co don't even get a mention. Danton is killed because he's nice, Desmoulins is killed for writing vieux Cordelier no3, Herault's killed because he's posh, Fabre for no reason at all, Brissot and co for no reason at all....
And so on.
Contributions were from David Andress, Hilary Mantel, Zizek, Ruth Scurr (briefly), some other chap, some other chapess whose name I know but forget, and of couse old scrotum face Simon Schama, who cackles that he'd love to have been there on 9 Thermidor.
Frankly, if you knew nothing much about the Revolution, you'd end up as confused as you were at the start. And if you do, you'll be shouting "Oy! What about the Hébertistes! You haven't even mentioned ANYTHING about them!" and similar things at the screen all the way through. Like Mark Steel said, it's like saying in 1940 the British blacked their windows out for no apparent reason.

Lots of bedroom scenes with Robespierre and Saint-Just (with earring), though...

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lrcy4/Terror!_Robespierre_and_the_French_Revolution/

I suspect that link will be no use to most of you, but as everything Mr Schama ever does turns up on youtube (there are some horribly misguided souls out there!) I imagine it'll surface at some point, as a GCSE study aid...

http://bbc.co.uk/i/lrcy4/

A different link. Probably no better.

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Oh God. I need to see this, and yet really, really, really don't want to.

Thank God it probably won't be put online straight away - seeing that immediately after last night's Torchwood might be the death of my soul. But at least Torchwood was quality depression.

I missed the first episode of Torchwood because it was on at the same time as The Supersizers Eat the French Revolution and Decomposing Whale Autopsy, didn't catch up before tuesdays episode, totally confused by plot by this time (why is Captain Jack naked in bondage being sprayed with gloop? Heh.) Will watch it all on Iplayer tomorrow so please, I beg you, no spoilers!

Oh, that programme...the thing is, it didn't even make sense! The person I was watching it with was just confused.

I shall not spoil! But have the tissues ready for the last two. And I was surprised by how much the Beeb showed with Jack...did you see the shot where you can make out peen? I choked back a girlish giggle when I saw that. Um. But back to more...er...elevated discourse...

Well, in a way, I'm glad it was nonsensical. At least that will detract from the number of people it convinces of its views. :/

D: The BBC link doesn't work. I managed to find an .avi file for The Supersizers Eat the French Revolution, but I can't figure out how to play it with pictures.

Also, eh? Your summary makes me confused as to what the BBC was trying to say about the Terror, or why they even bothered to bring in experts.

I am a little puzzled as to the Abel Gance comment- the film was silly and did have one of the oddest views of the Committee that I've seen on film (why give Couthon bunnies?) but it wasn't all that much 9-Thermidor=death-of-the-tyrant. It (obviously) had a rather Bonapartist stance, and there was that scene of poor Robespierre reaching for a book on Cromwell, but it wasn't as bad as some other portrayls of Robespierre that I've seen, and since the director cast himself as Saint-Just, the Jacobins get off really lightly. Saint-Just did have that speech in the convention, where the mob watched him with obvious admiration....

stupid!American would like to ask if the Cockney accent=evil thing abounds in British pieces or if it was a not-so-secret display of the director/producer's class issues?

Presumably for budget reasons, all the crowd and Convention scenes were cut-and-pasted from silent films, so you'd get a 2009 colour shot of the actor speaking the lines of a speech (or not, in the case of 9 Thermidor!), cut to - sepia / B/W scene from silent flm of angry crowd booing - cut back to 2009 actor looking speechless!

Cockney accents can be 'chirpy' (as in Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins), or Dickensian bad - Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist. The use of Cockney for Orcs in LOTR annoyed me, though it is 'true' to Tolkein's world-view, in which the rural 'Shire' is a paradise threatened by the urban/mechanical Saruman and his Orcs, based on Tolkien's own childhood in a rural area on the outskirts of the spreading industrial city of Birmingham (Uk, not Alabama!).

Collot was an actor, though, and well-travelled, so presumably would have had a universally-understood 'actorish' accent: it was Robespierre who reportedly had a noticeable northern accent. Arras was also one of the first towns in Europe to industrialise (in a medieval sense, as a textile town) - they should have given Collot a "BBC' accent, and Robespierre should have been a Brummie (Birmingham) or a Manc (Manchester) or - given that Arras was once Flanders, not France - Glaswegian (Glasgow Scottish)!

I managed to find an .avi file for The Supersizers Eat the French Revolution, but I can't figure out how to play it with pictures.

I've had this problem before. What you need to do is download a codec pack. Try the K-Lite Codec Pack (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm). I downloaded that on my old computer, and it made the video show up. I used a Vista-specific pack for my laptop, which also works nicely (and I think they have one for XP, too, if that's what you're using. But the K-Lite Codec Pack should work for anything).

VLC should work?

Lots of bedroom scenes with Robespierre and Saint-Just (with earring), though...
Do they exchange the marital dictator rings in said bedroom scenes? Why, of course I had to say that.

And I need to see this. And be sick for a week. And then transfer my rage in my master thesis. How apt and well-timed this all is, really.

The person who uploads The Supersizers programmes onto Youtube is US based, which makes me think there is a way of downloading BBC programmes somehow from outside Britain. I don't have an intel mac so I can't download at all!

Btw,'Saint-Just' is the pretty shorthaired actor in that cast photo - the longhaired young one is 'Herault'.

What, the emo haircut one?? But it makes no sense!!... or almost none!!

Yep, very emo. And characterised as a teenager who hadn't grown up.

...oh, God, they can't even be subtle. Already that giving him a non-existing-in-1793-94 emo haircut is not subtle. I will scream.

And what "kind" of bedroom scenes were there, if I may ask...? :P

Wake up and see what Camille has written, Maxime! - that sort of thing. Mutual speech writing. Possessive hands on shoulders in CSP meeeting. No explanation, by the way, of where he was supposed to be living - just a four poster bed in a rather posh looking room and Saint-Just appearing by his (bed) side.

Didn't you know Saint-Just wore skinny jeans and cut himself?

And make-up. And inexplicably ~~fagottish~~ effeminate. I'm sure Michelet describes that at one point, along with Saint-Just's fascination with visiting cemetaries and painting his student bedroom all in black and having skulls to decorate it. And, stuff.

The representations of Saint-Just have amazingly improved since Christopher Thompson.

Better Emo than the New Romantic 1970's French TV one with eyeliner and mascara! He looked like one of Duran Duran.

Actually, it was the butchest Robespierre I've seen - apart from a bit of staring at trees. Rather disappointingly, they didn't do him crying and storming out of the CSP. Presumably they think a masculine Robespierre is scarier than a lacy stripey speccy skinny one.

They freaking asked for that caption:

I just keep on shouting: WTFWITHTHEWINE??? It's so over the damn top and the costumes look so cheap! (Look at Saint-Just's -- it's Saint-Just, isn't it? Impossible that it's not, he's almost snuggling Robespierre -- boots!) It's like some kind of very bad small theatre production!

Finally though, who is emo!guy?

I think it is Barère, the emo guy anyhow...at least i wanna think he is..

L to R, Robespierre, Herault, Couthon, Saint-Just, Carnot. The only other speaking actor was Collot. Barere, Billaud and the rest just didn't exist!

...They can't even cast actors that make sense. Or give them hairdos that make sense. And I am so confused with this red sash! Which really doesn't fit Carnot either.

And, aww, no dictator!rings then. I am so disappointed. Unless it just means that Robespierre was jealous of Hérault's then. (Wtfwtfwtfwtf...)

Nothing make sense....unfortunately. They just want to keep ruining everything about the french revolution. How much further can they kill it? They should of LEAST, gotta the CPS right! GEEZ!

lol, I love your subject line. <3

They apparently didn't get the memo on Robespierre's thoughts on champagne, either. I'm surprised, really--from their perspective that would have been such a good opportunity to portray him as abnormal.

OMSB

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I need to watch that too! Too bad i'm not living in the UK, god..that's gonna make me depressed if i watch that. But i have to.

>.> i just want to watch how horrible it is.

>.<
and think bad thoughts about Robespierre and St. Just in that bedroom together..*sighs*

Stalin, Pol-Pot, Khomeini? Oh god...Would they put them to a docudrama on Cromwell? By the way, is it htese people who then make idealizing movies on a man who executed a couple of his own wives and of humanist philosophers?
Some serious beheading should be done :-) Sibylla

By the way, is it htese people who then make idealizing movies on a man who executed a couple of his own wives and of humanist philosophers?
Seconded.

Actually, The Tudors wasn't a BBC production - I think it's an American/Irish co-production, though it's shown here on BBC2. The initial reaction here was WTF, Henry V111 never looked like that. But that guy's cute. And - woah! Bums! Tits! Everything! Ok, we'll watch this...

In its defence - and I like Thomas More (that is, he's an interesting figure and writer - I think I'm obsessed with Utopianism in history, looking at my bookshelves!) - it's the first time I've seen More portrayed in film, TV etc. as burning 'heretics'. I'm rather pissed off generally by the way More is simply regarded as a hero, saint, etc (he's the Patron Saint of Politicians - really!)- he died for his beliefs, but he also killed for them. Not unlike Robespierre and co. Schoolchildren only seem to get taught the 'good' part, all light, no shade - through the Robert Bolt play - the burnings are never mentioned!

You are SO right about Thomas More. As for Henry VIII, taking to consideration how highly "problematic" figure he was, it is really surprising how tolerant, or even positive his film descriptions of him generally are, and it's not only The Tudors, there is a long tradition of an "understanding" approach to his person in the fiction. S.

The Henry VIII thing is an interesting one, because we all know he was a total bastard (the current David Starkey series on Channel 4 is called 'Mind of a Tyrant', though it's clear Starkey loves him!), but - for purely selfish reasons of his own - the Reformation happened in his reign. Protestantism in England predates his reign, of course, but from then on (with a blip with Bloody Mary) it's the official State religion and in its various forms, the driving force behind Britain's (global) development (I'm an atheist, btw, but I'm fascinated by early protestantism, millenarian revolutionary sects, etc - I was utterly astonished by the way that programme last night skipped over the religious issue in the French Revolution in a couple of lines!). As such, he's a crucial figure, and acknowledged as such. There's an expression here, 'he's a bastard, but he's our bastard', which I suppose explains the attitude a bit.

I am not so convinced by the Weberian protestantism-driving force behind global development thesis, but it is probably out of place to discuss it here. Anyway, I also find the early protestantism interesting, but I actually prefer people like Luther to opportunists like Henry VIII :-)

Cromwell's an interesting point: there was the equivalent of a Thermidorean reaction after his death (surviving signatories to Charles 1's death warrant were hung, drawn and quartered) - there's a good chapter on the historiography in Christopher Hill 'God's Englishman'. The statue of him outside the House of Commons was erected overnight, before anyone had time to object, in the late 19thc. Good (and well-known) quote on the issue is from '1066 and all That': the Roundheads are 'Right but Repulsive, the Cavaliers Wrong but Wromantic' (sic). In most 20thc cinema, Cavaliers are goodies and Roundheads are baddies, until the 1960's, when you get the epic 'Cromwell'(Richard Harris in eyeliner - an Irishman, intresting casting given that Ireland was Cromwell's Vendée!) in which he's manly and good, and 'Witchfinder General', in which our heroes are Roundhead soldiers. Recently, we've had 'To Kill a KIng' - Cromwell evil (Tim Roth), and 'The Devil's Whore' - sexy(!) Cromwell attacked from the LEFT.

I recently complained to the BBC when a BBC2 programme repeatedly referred to the Republic as 'the Interregnum', and called Charles 1's son 'Charles II' in a programme set during the Republican period.

At least Cromwell has his Cromwell Roads in his country. Moreover, the French do not indulge at spreading fiction and historiography which would depict him as reptile-impotent-bloodthirsty-monster around the world. (i think it's clear who I am comparing him to)

As Cromwell and Napoleon are frequently mentioned together by historians, I suppose it would be odd to loathe one and admire the other!

Oh, it's true. Why do you think they are mentionned together so often? Do you think Cromwell as a historical figure is closer to Napoleon than to Robespierre?
It is also interesting how the image of Napoleon has always been quite positive, it seems that the blood shed on a battlefield is ok with the historians and general public :-)

Congratulations, BBC, you've just officially done worse than the History Channel. I must say, I didn't think that was possible, but it sounds like they've made it their business to prove me wrong.

Yeah seriously. My host Phillop (British and the in the UK) referenced that program to me. I nearly SCREAMED bloody murder to him.

no..

no..

wait..

I did scream.

Luckily no one heard me.

The History Channel was okay..they didn't try to PURPOSELY KILL the revolution..BBC has done it, drove a stake through it. >.> I'm gonna go eat an apple now.

Why does everyone think Danton was nice?
Also, maybe Fabre was killed for messing with the calendar and giving people longer weeks.
I must see this!

I just want to say that I deeply appreciate all the Schama bashing. He's such a glib, shallow asshole! For a while we in the U.S. were stuck with him as art critic for the New Yorker, for which reason I always refer to him as "Simon Fucking Schama." Mercifully he wore out his welcome and the unfortunate Brits now have to endure him. Can we send Christopher Hitchens back, too, please?

I don't know if this link will post successfully - for some reason, I can still get New Statesman web pages on my computer even though I ceased to be a subscriber to them years ago, though they may not link to yours - but if you can read it, enjoy! The 'Simon Schama's John Donne' thing really really pissed me off, too - and I agree with this critic on the Beowulf programme - Michael Wood was great, such a contrast! http://www.newstatesman.com/television/2009/06/simon-schama-donne-historian

Christopher Hitchens - hmm, mixed bag, very arrogant, but he loathes UK politician George Galloway almost as much as I do, and expresses his loathing very well. Galloway, his 'Respect Party" (which holds sexually segregated meetings - women at the back!), and their various media and arts-world supporters are the worst thing to happen in British politics since Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts! But it's 1a.m. here, so I'm not getting started on that!

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That programme's just been on...

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Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!

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Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!

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