Welcome to 1789...

There have been quite a few discussions about the various film interpretations of the Revolution--the good, the bad, and the ugly--but here’s a new twist on things:  if you were going to make a movie about our fabulous revolutionary guys (and girls)....who would you cast to play your favorite?

It’s driving me crazy that I can’t think of a good actor to play Camille--as far as physical features are concerned anyway. None of my favorite actors resemble him in the least. He’s attractive to me, but that’s because of, well, all those aspects of him--his character--that are deeper than appearance. “He had a bilious complexion, like Robespierre’s, a hard and sinister eye, more like that of the osprey than that of the eagle,” according to one contemporary. Ouch! (Royalist propaganda, I say). I don’t think he’s *that* unfortunate-looking in his portraits, even if he’s not *handsome* in the conventional sense.

But then, his “ugliness” was supposedly a kind of “intellectual ugliness that pleases.” I think he’s really just *awkward*--in terms of his face (and sometimes in his behavior, too). However, it was the kind of “awkwardness that pleases” (hehe). So, after thinking hard about it, I think a good actor to play Camille in a movie would be...

( ...and the Oscar goes to... )