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victoriavandal.livejournal.com) wrote in
revolution_fr2009-07-11 10:08 pm
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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...
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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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...
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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.
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Oh, that programme...the thing is, it didn't even make sense! The person I was watching it with was just confused.
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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. :/
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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?
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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)!
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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).
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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.
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Btw,'Saint-Just' is the pretty shorthaired actor in that cast photo - the longhaired young one is 'Herault'.
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fagottisheffeminate. 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.
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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.
Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
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?
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
And, aww, no dictator!rings then. I am so disappointed. Unless it just means that Robespierre was jealous of Hérault's then. (Wtfwtfwtfwtf...)
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
Re: Let us toast with champagne before toasting with blood!
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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*
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-12 04:05 am (UTC)(link)Some serious beheading should be done :-) Sibylla
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Seconded.
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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!
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-12 09:29 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-12 11:07 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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.
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-12 11:11 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-12 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)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 :-)
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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.
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Also, maybe Fabre was killed for messing with the calendar and giving people longer weeks.
I must see this!
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-14 09:46 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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!