Hi! Just realised that I need to properly thank you for uploading the La Révolution française with English subs on YouTube! You did a great job.
(Also, I feel that your comments in the subtitles for the second part is what initially radicalised me, opened my eyes um, inspired me to research more context and try to formulate a more nuanced view of what happened in 1794?)
So again, merci citoyen
Omg I'm so glad to hear this because I get SO MANY ANNOYING COMMENTS about my annotations on Part 2 from people who refuse to think of the movie as anything other than a masterpiece lol
As if I was gonna let normies walk away thinking SJ ever put a hit on Camille!!
Long shot, but do any of my friends on here have images of the Christopher Thompson vid where he's singing with a guitar and it's like, blimey, the war effort needs Saint-Just to go busking? Thanks... No particular reason, I could just do with the laugh.
sometimes I think about Andrzej Seweryn, the Polish actor who played Robespierre in La Révolution française (1989) and named one of his son Maximilien, going “I’m against Robespierre, I’m absolutely against violence” in a BTS interview...LIKE A LIAR but also like a Polish actor who had previously played in Wadja’s Danton (1983) and understood exactly why Robespierre is still feared and vilified, and why casting Polish actors in the role of Robespierre and his supporters is everything but neutral in the Cold War context: like a Polish actor in 1989 France trying not to shot himself in the foot :(
I think the reason LRF was made from a Dantonist approach was to justify Camille's actions and choices as the protagonist. The filmmakers didn't want to show him as a fool or couldn't have him curse Danton when they executed like Przybyszewska did (very interesting, but not a historical fact). In my opinion, Danton in LRF is not always portrayed as a praiseworthy character. His desperation, opportunism, glib tongue and cheap sentimentality sometimes irritate me. I doubt that he really believed in the Revolution. I think he was only interested in himself, Gabrielle and Camille. If he is glorified, it is probably because he is Camille's friend until the death. (So it is inexplicable why the movie ends with Danton's monologue. Shouldn't they have let Camille (or someone else, like Gabrielle or Lucile) read it?)
Still, I think Brandauer's Danton is a enough sympathetic and lovable person. It's much better than Wajda. I don't understand how critics can consider Depardieu's Danton, that stupid influencer and attention-seeking monster, a "humane and patriotic hero".
In LRF, Fabre is present at the beginning of the movie and possibly during his trial (I am unable to identify the actors in the back row, but I can assume one of them is meant to be Fabre judging by similarity to the first shot of him in the film). He is not, however, present at the execution. No twink around shown in the carts, none guillotined.
I am therefore drawing the conclusion that Fabre is alive in the LRF universe. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.