"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." - Martin Luther King Jr
Like much of director Jean Renoir's work during this period, "La Marseillaise", which offers a romanticised retelling of the French Revolution of 1789, spends much of its time contrasting the lives of commoners with those of the aristocracy. Modern audiences will no doubt find this class baiting tedious, but such angry tracts were common in the lead up to, and wake of, the second world war (everyone from Renoir to John Huston to Rossellini to Pasolini to Pontecorvo etc). By the end of the 70s, cinema's fires of revolution, which Renoir lights here, and which were subsequently passed on from torch to torch for roughly four decades, would completely burn out.
The film is divided into five chapters (The Court, The Civil and The Military Authorities, The Aristocrats, The Marseilles Locals, and The Ordinary Citizens), but essentially takes the structure of a grand march from Marseilles to Paris, a battalion of 500 volunteers arriving in time to capture The Tuileries Palace, leading to the publication of the Brunswick Manifesto and the overthrowing of Louis XVI's monarchy. With this march came "La Marseillaise", the song of the peasants, which later becomes France's national anthem.
Renoir's direction is impeccable, the director adopting a naturalistic, semi-documentary tone. The film's well-choreographed battles and crowd scenes are particularly impressive. Today, its marriage of scope and sensitivity means "La Marseillaise" is still the best film to directly document the French Revolution. Martin Scorsese calls it "one of the finest and richest historical films ever made", and would borrow from it heavily for his stylish but strangely vapid pulp-revolutionary movie, "Gangs of New York".
Renoir himself considered "La Marseillaise" one of his favourite films. Fittingly, it was partially sponsored by the Popular Front government of France (a coalition of leftists in power at the time) and was also financially backed by the French trade unions and the public.
In terms of flaws, the film fails to get us to actually "care" about the revolution, has too much speechifying during its first hour (it eventually becomes quite stirring) and possess a brand of 1930s melodrama which modern audiences will no doubt turn their noses up to. Ironically, the most touching scene in the film is of a tortured King Louis XVI surrendering his power to the National Assembly. Visconti would be proud.
What dates the film most, though, is the fact that we now firmly live in post-revolutionary times. Renoir rallies against aristocrats and their crimes against humanity, he champions for the revolution as a call to the rights of man, he reminds citizens to always be vigilant in defending liberty against tyranny, he advocates against both monarchy and nationalism, he demands that commoners be given an equal voice in government...bunch such things have a quaint, almost naive tinge nowadays.
In our era of "diversity", "devolved power", "anticentralizen", "digitized capitalism", "mobilized local creativity and self organisation", there is simply no head to strike. Revolution is an art. It is an art of realising and "seizing the moment". Today, in which context is near impossible, in which moments and time itself seem increasingly fleeting, in which "culture" is one of continuous flux (or rather, the continuous rapid movement of commodities, which creates the illusion of change, of progress) and perpetual confusion, traditional revolution, as Renoir sees here, seems impossible. This is what another French director, Robert Bresson, realised with "The Devil, Possibly", and what Godard spends his career wrestling with.
8/10 – Worth one viewing.
Like much of director Jean Renoir's work during this period, "La Marseillaise", which offers a romanticised retelling of the French Revolution of 1789, spends much of its time contrasting the lives of commoners with those of the aristocracy. Modern audiences will no doubt find this class baiting tedious, but such angry tracts were common in the lead up to, and wake of, the second world war (everyone from Renoir to John Huston to Rossellini to Pasolini to Pontecorvo etc). By the end of the 70s, cinema's fires of revolution, which Renoir lights here, and which were subsequently passed on from torch to torch for roughly four decades, would completely burn out.
The film is divided into five chapters (The Court, The Civil and The Military Authorities, The Aristocrats, The Marseilles Locals, and The Ordinary Citizens), but essentially takes the structure of a grand march from Marseilles to Paris, a battalion of 500 volunteers arriving in time to capture The Tuileries Palace, leading to the publication of the Brunswick Manifesto and the overthrowing of Louis XVI's monarchy. With this march came "La Marseillaise", the song of the peasants, which later becomes France's national anthem.
Renoir's direction is impeccable, the director adopting a naturalistic, semi-documentary tone. The film's well-choreographed battles and crowd scenes are particularly impressive. Today, its marriage of scope and sensitivity means "La Marseillaise" is still the best film to directly document the French Revolution. Martin Scorsese calls it "one of the finest and richest historical films ever made", and would borrow from it heavily for his stylish but strangely vapid pulp-revolutionary movie, "Gangs of New York".
Renoir himself considered "La Marseillaise" one of his favourite films. Fittingly, it was partially sponsored by the Popular Front government of France (a coalition of leftists in power at the time) and was also financially backed by the French trade unions and the public.
In terms of flaws, the film fails to get us to actually "care" about the revolution, has too much speechifying during its first hour (it eventually becomes quite stirring) and possess a brand of 1930s melodrama which modern audiences will no doubt turn their noses up to. Ironically, the most touching scene in the film is of a tortured King Louis XVI surrendering his power to the National Assembly. Visconti would be proud.
What dates the film most, though, is the fact that we now firmly live in post-revolutionary times. Renoir rallies against aristocrats and their crimes against humanity, he champions for the revolution as a call to the rights of man, he reminds citizens to always be vigilant in defending liberty against tyranny, he advocates against both monarchy and nationalism, he demands that commoners be given an equal voice in government...bunch such things have a quaint, almost naive tinge nowadays.
In our era of "diversity", "devolved power", "anticentralizen", "digitized capitalism", "mobilized local creativity and self organisation", there is simply no head to strike. Revolution is an art. It is an art of realising and "seizing the moment". Today, in which context is near impossible, in which moments and time itself seem increasingly fleeting, in which "culture" is one of continuous flux (or rather, the continuous rapid movement of commodities, which creates the illusion of change, of progress) and perpetual confusion, traditional revolution, as Renoir sees here, seems impossible. This is what another French director, Robert Bresson, realised with "The Devil, Possibly", and what Godard spends his career wrestling with.
8/10 – Worth one viewing.