Today is
the 225th anniversary of the Tennis Court
Oath, a key moment in the early stages of the French
Revolution. To mark the occasion, watch one of the strangest movies
ever made about the revolutionary period: Anthony Mann’s The
Black Book, a.k.a. Reign of Terror.
This came out in 1949, a time when Mann mostly worked in the
film noir genre. The first time I sat down to watch it,
many years ago, I wondered how Mann would adjust to making a period
picture. I quickly got my answer: He treated it like it was just
another noir. From the beginning this looks like an
18th-century Big Sleep, and after a few minutes it starts
to sound like one too. By the time Robespierre shouts “Don’t call
me Max!” at 6:46, you know you’re seeing something wonderfully
weird.
The history is completely garbled, of course, but in a picture
like this that only adds to the charm. Enjoy:
Bonus links: This isn’t the only good French Revolution
film floating around on the Internet. Marat/Sade
is on YouTube, while Hulu Plus has Andrzej Wajda’s 1983
picture Danton, with its
deliberate echoes of the repression then ongoing in Poland. If
you’re looking for something lighter, you can watch Scaramouche or Start the
Revolution Without Me. And then there’s my favorite D.W.
Griffith flick, the overlong but enjoyably insane Orphans of the
Storm. As I wrote
elsewhere:
If you’d like to peer directly into an artist’s anxious
psyche, you need only watch the two most powerful scenes in
Orphans of the Storm. One is a decadent aristocratic
bacchanal; the other is a chaotic riot. One is filled with
resentment of the rich; the other, fear of the poor. It’s like
writing hysteria with Lightning.
For past installments of the Friday A/V Club, go here.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/Un4fav
via IFTTT