Marat / Sade

I saw this film version of the Royal Shakespeare Production of Marat/Sade in a brief theatrical release years ago while I was in college, and was profoundly moved by it then. Several years ago I was delighted to find and purchase the DVD, and upon viewing it found it had lost none of it's punch, it's relevance or it's brilliance! It is visually striking, the writing is a feast for the ear and the mind, and it 'works' brilliantly on not only the level of watching a play, but drawing the viewer into the play, observing the immates from just beyond the bars. At the end when de Sade laughs at the chaos in the madhouse, it is our polite sensibilities he laughts at! A year or so ago I had the great fortune of seeing a production of this play at the University of Texas, which again was wonderfully realized. I cannot understand why this DVD is no longer available from the manufacturer: I suppose that on the surface it seems of limited appeal - but the theme of the philosohical debate betw... Read more

Based on a Peter Weiss' play and staged by inmates of a French insane asylum, Peter Brook directed a brutal, fascinating, demolishing and ruthless radiography that reveals clever reflections, powerful statements under a claustrophobic ambiance. The level of struggling tension really reaches unbearable limits. There's a crude dissection about the insights of the power, unmasking the perversity behind the term revolution. Marat and Marquis of Sade confront themselves exposing everyone of them one under the optic of the most fevered idealism and the other with the power of a desperate anguish, supported by a penetrating knowledge about the vast extensions of the human soul. On the other hand, we notice how the naïve beliefs of Carlota Corday will be turning until her final decision. The accurate camera angles, the hopeless people, crowd's unhelpful screams in the void, the latent paranoia of that asylum as a sharp metaphor of our surrounding world has never portrayed with such mag... Read more

You ever watch a movie that just sends chills up and down your body from beginning to end? You ever watch a movie that cements itself in your subconscious and pulverizes you with its magnetism over and over, until you just cannot take it any more? You ever watch a movie that is so rich and so disturbingly authentic that you feel compelled to laud it above all others? This is that movie. From the opening credits until the closing ones, `Marat/Sade' is one of the most engaging and utterly phenomenal pieces of art I have ever witnessed. It is mind shattering in its delivery, coupling some of the most intriguing and utterly brilliant performances with one of the most compelling concepts ever put to film. This is a masterclass film, one that gets everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) right. The film tells of the Marquis de Sade, a man imprisoned at Charenton Asylum in 1808. He writes and directs a play starring his fellow inmates, a play that tells of the French Revolution, and h... Read more

An excellent movie, which is no more or less than stunning, stark and bleak filmed version of Peter Weiss' haunting, diturbing and magnificent play. It is very well cast, with the same actors who first perfromed the play in London under Peter Brook's direction. Great perfomances all round by some very great actors, some of whom are well known, some of whom are not. Among the well known names: Glenda Jackson MP, who is a memorabla Corday, although one bitten by a Tse-Tse fly, the late Ian Richardson, yes the snide and sneaky Francis Urquhart, who is a brooding and glowering Marat, he even looks like the real Jean-Paul Marat and Richardson is spot on as Marat, who was a raving idealist, his body and mind hollowed out by illness and paranoia, excactly as depicted in the play. Among the not so well-known: Freddie Jones, good as ever, as one of the four man musical troupe, and Patrick Magee as the marquis de Sade. Patrick Magee should of course not be confused with the debonnaire,... Read more

This is an amazing film along with being an amazing play. Peter Brook, who is one of the world's most renowned theater directors, has made an excellent adaptation of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (the gloriously long official title). I saw this film in college, and love the intensity of the whole thing. Now that I am older and have read de Sade and a touch of Marat (which I didn't read in college, imagine that), things actually make more sense now, and the film/play resonates more deeply. Patrick Magee and Ian Richardson are phenomenal in this film, and Brook's direction manages somehow to incorporate the best of the film aesthetic and theater aesthetic. It is an amazingly intense experience, one that will sear itself in your memory. A note on the transfer. The current edition is by MGM/UA, and while it isn't great (the film elements are a little worn out)... Read more