Marat/Sade
Tags: avant garde, violence, atmospheric, insanity, philosophical, claustrophobic

Plot synopsis:
Set in the historical Charenton Asylum, Marat/Sade is almost entirely a "play within a play". The main story takes place on 13 July 1808, after the French Revolution; the play directed by the Marquis de Sade within the story takes place during the Revolution, in the middle of 1793, culminating in the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat (which took place on 13 July 1793), then quickly brings the audience up to date (1808). The actors are the inmates of the asylum; the nurses and supervisors occasionally step in to restore order. The bourgeois director of the hospital, Coulmier, supervises the performance, accompanied by his wife and daughter. He is a supporter of the post-revolutionary government led by Napoleon, in place at the time of the production, and believes the play he has organised to be an endorsement of his patriotic views. His patients, however, have other ideas, and they make a habit of speaking lines he had attempted to suppress, or deviating entirely into personal opinion. They, as people who came out of the revolution no better than they went in, are not entirely pleased with the course of events as they occurred.
The Marquis de Sade, the man after whom sadism is named, did indeed direct performances in Charenton with other inmates there, encouraged by Coulmier. De Sade is a main character in the play, conducting many philosophical dialogues with Marat and observing the proceedings with sardonic amusement. He remains detached and cares little for practical politics and the inmates' talk of right and justice; he simply stands by as an observer and an advocate of his own nihilistic and individualist beliefs.

Review: Because I show this film to classes, I've seen it dozens of times and I'm continually intrigued by it because each viewing reveals new meanings as it seems to weirdly comment on the current day's events that occurred long after it was written and filmed.
The first viewing is often disorienting because it piles so much historic-socio-sexual-political content up with so much odd directing and extreme acting style that it is hard to grasp at first, but repeated viewings suck you in like an intellectual's Rocky Horror Picture Show, and some theatre junkies learn to sing along.The Film of the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Marat/Sade (1967) is considered a classic avant garde 1960's drama in the style known as "Theatre of Cruelty".
It stars Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday (now Dame Glenda Jackson, MP), Ian Richardson (of "House of Cards" fame) as Marat, and Patrick Magee (Clockwork Orange) as de Sade.As the title implies, the film is entirely a play-within-a-play where most cast members depict both a character from the French Revolution as well as an insane asylum inmate playing that character.
While the film (like the later comedy-drama about deSade, "Quills") addresses censorship, it is primarily concerned with a debate between Marat as a sort of representative of revolutionary radical communism, and de Sade as a nihilistic existentialist frustrated with his own, and society's, violently cruel urges, as well as the futility of revolutionary action to improve mankind.
Great moments include a comic "orgy" scene where the inmates sing "What's the point of a revolution without general copulation?" in a round like "row-row-row your boat" and mime a vigorously improbable group sex event fully clothed, Magee's various speeches on the nature of man: "What we do, is but a shadow of what we want to do...",  Richardson's unblinking intensity as he waits for the knife to "kill" him, and Jackson, doing a little dance trying to capture the knife from de Sade while he teases her with it in an effort to get her in his arms.
Add to this the delightful theatricality and musical numbers (yes there are many musical numbers!) and it is little wonder that the play on which the film is based has regularly been performed all around the world ever since it was written..
(I also saw the movie a few years after it was released.)Marat/Sade is an amazingly original and stunningly powerful philosophical and psychological descent into one of the most complex periods of recorded history, the French Revolution, the Terror that ensued, and the rise of Napoleon and his empire.
The multi-layered ideas come thick and fast; I had to watch the movie over two nights because there's so much to think about, and some of the words and images are so overwhelming.Of the Royal Shakespeare Company actors in the film (little known at the time), Glenda Jackson had the most notable subsequent career, but Ian Richardson (Marat) has also done remarkable things (and he's so young here, you may not recognize him).This is not a movie for casual entertainment, but if you care about history and the deepest questions of good and evil and free will, you'll find much of value here..
The French Revolution being the main theme, echoed by various inmates' views of it, as well as several forays into philosophical thinking of man's condition.
Plenty of symbolism, hard to draw a line where reality ends and madness begins (is it history, the play, the actor, the character, the madman, the script, etc.).
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 (1967/Peter Brook) **** out of ****"He who kills without passion, is a machine."- Marquis de Sade (Patrick Magee)What does one look for in a film?
It is basically a filmed play about the French Revolution and the last days of Jean-Paul Marat (Ian Richardson).
But after the second act, the inmates have secretly taken over, and he is forced just to watch in horror, as are we...the audience.It is very hard to classify this film.
This gives you the feeling that you must sit up and listen, or they will be angry with you."Marat/Sade" is the most unique, and most ghostly film I have ever scene.
I know little or nothing about the French Revolution, but I have seen this movie several times.
MARAT/SADE is the film version of a play that arose from an actor's workshop exploring various theatrical theories expressed by French actor-director-writer Antoine Artard, who extolled a style of performance he described as "theatre of cruelty"--which, broadly speaking, consists of an assault upon the audience's senses by every means possible.
Ultimately, and although it makes effective use of its setting and the cinematography mirrors the chaos expected of such a situation, the film version of MARAT/SADE is less a motion picture than a record of a justly famous stage play that offers a complex statement re man's savagery.The story of MARAT/SADE concerns the performance of a play by inmates of an early 1800s insane asylum, with script and direction by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
(While this may sound a bit far-fetched, it is based on fact: de Sade was known to have written plays for performance by inmates during his own incarceration in an asylum.) The story of the play concerns the assassination of the revolutionary Marat by Charotte Corday, but the play itself becomes a debate between various characters, all of which may be read as in some way intrinsically destructive and evil.
Since all the characters are played by mentally-ill inmates of the asylum (the actor playing Marat, for example, is described as a paranoid, and the actress playing Corday suffers from sleeping sickness and melancholia), the debate is further fueled by their insanity, unpredictability as performers, and the staff's reactions to both their behavior and the often subversive nature of the script they play out.Patrick Magee as de Sade, Glenda Jackson as the inmate playing Corday (it was her breakout performance), and Ian Richardson as the inmate playing Marat offering impressive performances; indeed, the ensemble cast as a whole is incredibly impressive, and they keep the extremely wordy script moving along with considerable interest.
Even so, it will be obvious that the material works better as a live performance than as a film, and I do not recommend it to a casual viewer; its appeal will be largely limited to the literary and theatrical intelligentsia.
Marat/Sade is quite simply one of the best movies I have ever seen.
The fact that a good portion of events described in the movie aren't historically accurate, doesn't mar the precise and razor sharp script (an English translation of a German Play).
I'll end with a quote from the beginning of the movie, "...see Marat debating with De Sade, each one wrestling with each other's views.
A film of a play about a play put on by the inmates of the Asylum of Charenton in France, 1808, as directed by the Marquis de Sade (played by Patrick Magee).
The man who runs the asylum sits on the side (behind the bars) and occasionally walks out onto the stage to calm his residents down, or to castigate the Marquis for including certain undesirable notions in his play.
The subject of the play is the nature and importance of human cruelty as demonstrated by the French Revolution (which ended some 15 years earlier), but which continues on, even to the present, far beyond the actual setting of the play.
Besides Magee, Glenda Jackson deserves special praise for her performance as the narcoleptic inmate who plays the executioner of Marat.
A very unusual movie, but French Revolution buffs most likely will have a better understanding of this ultra intellectual movie than most people!.
Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange) plays the Marquis de Sade (the founder of sadism),  who directs a play performed by people in an insane asylum as a form of a therapeutic psychodrama.
The Marquis de Sade is there as a political prisoner and traces the history of the French Revolution in the play he has written.The viewer sits outside the bars of a large bathroom cell, where the play is performed, as part of the gentry who watch the play for entertainment.
Charlotte Corday,  played by Glenda Jackson (Lost and Found) in her starring film debut, has narcolepsy,  a condition characterized by brief attacks of deep sleep.
Corday at the end of the play murders Jean Paul Marat in his bath tub with a dagger.Interwoven throughout the play is the Marquis the Sade's interpretation of the French Revolution.
By the way the actual title of this movie is 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.
In an insane asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs Jean Paul Marat's last days through a theater play.
As others have noted, this film can be enjoyed by anyone but probably has much more significance for those who grasp the politics and philosophy of the French Revolution.
Unlike Any Movie You Will Ever See. Peter Brook, for many years the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has more than once astounded the theater world with his interpretations of familiar plays by Shakespeare and others.
Marat/Sade, which I'd seen previously on stage, is a Brechtian political drama about the French revolution performed in a madhouse under the direction of the notorious Marquis de Sade.
But the real brilliance of Brook's choices is captured best by Glenda Jackson, who appears as a victim of narcolepsy cast in the role of Charlotte Corday, Marat's assassin.
Other brilliant performances are turned in by Michael Williams as the Herald who announces key scenes; Robert Landon Lloyd as Roux a cleric turned revolutionary who is seen most of the time in a strait-jacket because of his violent behavior, John Steiner as Monsieur Depere, a sexual predator who lusts after Jackson's Corday and a quartet of three men and a woman in comedia del' arte garb who comment on the action in song and verse.It is a bizarre film, difficult to watch at times, but brilliant in its execution.
This film and play were especially popular in the 60s, because at that time you could get an audience by promising lots of violence and sex on stage (although this movie is mild compared to the current crop).
The actors in the original production (look for Glenda Jackson's comments) hated the play because it was so harrowing and demanding; it grates upon the audience, too.
If you enjoy lots of pretentious posing, shouting, and gratuitous rudeness, then submit yourself to this agonizing bit of cinema.One good thing: watching this film finally clarified for me where the Bonzo Dog Band got the song line: "We are normal and we want our freedom!" Which is what I began to shout about 20 minutes in....
With all the outrageousness on the screen, with the layers of her characterization -- a deeply disturbed woman putting in great effort to parrot her scripted lines in a staccato voice -- she truly disappeared into this "inmate" portraying the role of Charlotte Corday.I've watched it again today for the first time in almost 40 years.
It was hard for me to follow the film because I know very little about the French Revolution and also because of my english competency.
It's shrill, endless and stagey.But it's conceits (The context and meaning of the murder of French Revolutionary figure Marat by Charlotte Corday, enacted as a play by post-revolutionary mental patients & penned by the similarly imprisoned Marquis de Sade) are unique and provocative.
The play within the play has musical numbers; a trifle given to Corday (Glenda Jackson) as de Sade supplies her with the murder weapon is really nice; "...but love meant something...
to you, ...I see, and something much different to me..." The bench duet between Charlotte and her sex-crazed nemesis is memorable.You will need a working understanding of the major players of the French Revolution and a willingness to listen to Marat expound on political theory at length.
There's plenty to think about and though the Bourgeoisie are clearly portrayed as villainous swine, it still doesn't offer any easy answers to the long, painful aftermath of the French Revolution.Sadly, Patrick McGhee (A Clockwork Orange) is the type of leading man who would never again be seen after the advent of focus-groups and the blockbuster.
Allegedly good actors horrendously overacting: Glenda Jackson, Patrick Magee, Freddie Jones, and Ian Richardson (he of the unblinking stare) are all terrible.3.
The Marquis de Sade (Patrick Magee) puts on a play of an assassination for an audience.
The acting is great across the board but Magee, Ian Richardson and Glenda Jackson (in her major film debut) are exceptional.
The movie is disturbing--I realize these are all actors playing roles but they're so good that you believe everything you're seeing.
In many ways Marat/Sade functions far better as the play with a play because it gives the actors a chance to interact with the audience, in many productions the actors have wandered out into the theatre and done a fairly comprehensive job of breaking down the 'fourth wall'.
Richardson shines as does Jackson and Willians but Magee, his weary features making a perfect de Sade is magnificent and it's a shame he couldn't be coaxed into doing more film roles.So, RADA wannabes, think you can handle a role?
Others I can think of include A Clockwork Orange, Women in Love and The Devils (the latter, almost impossible to get on DVD these days, but I have a copy!).I had not seen Marat/Sade for decades until my daughter (doing a degree in drama production) found her university making a production of it with she cast in the Glenda Jackson role.
Good film adaptation of a brilliant play.
but overall it's a surprisingly good job of translating the first Broadway production to the screen.(I have both the Caedmon complete recording of the Broadway production and a copy of the film, and I've played de Sade, so I'm a bit more aware of the details than most viewers would be.
Alas, I can't read German so I can't compare any of these to the "real" original.) If you can find a good live production of Marat/Sade, see it.
But most telling was the fact that my wife went to bed without me -- for the first time in 12 years -- because it disturbed her in/out dream cycle to the point of pushing her over the edge.I can't recommend this movie.
There is a weighty drag on the human spirit because the characters are actually mental patients in the time of the Marquis de Sade.
The most engaging performance was that of Patrick Magee, who was already a seasoned film actor at the time, and I truly believe he helped bring much of the cinematic qualities.
This movie is about a play the inmates of a Charenton lunatics asylum are supposed to perform in 1808, under the direction of the former marquis De Sade, one of them.
The main character is Marat, a nobody, who became one of the most blood thirsty leaders of the French Revolution.
Part of the reason what makes this movie so unique is the actors & actresses having to act like their in a asylum and from what conditions they (inmates/patients) have and to act with those conditions.
the camera work played the eyes of what you saw as not all inmates had really a role they were the background sound effects or group to in-act the story as they were in a steamer room/wash room and the room was well used.
To commemorate the anniversary (and to show off the hospital's own special brand of art therapy) a group of inmates at Charenton Asylum perform a play recreating Marat's last days, written and directed by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
Directed by Peter Brook and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's a filmed version of Peter Weiss' play of the same name.
The three main players--Patrick Magee (de Sade), Ian Richardson (Marat), and Glenda Jackson (Corday)--are all outstanding.
What I can't get over is that these actors had already performed these roles on stage umpteen times before they made the film.
That they performed such a challenging play night after night with the same kind of talent, intensity and passion you see on the screen is remarkable.Marat/Sade is definitely a polarizing film.
De Sade (Patrick Magee) directs the inmates of the Charenton insane asylum in a play about Charlotte Corday's murder of the radical journalist Jean Paul Marat.
Though the action takes place in one setting (the asylum's bathroom...Marat was in fact killed in his bathtub), director Brook keeps his camera moving and the film, though essentially a filmed stage play, takes on the feel of a fevered action movie.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.The title pretty much sums up this powerfully visualized "play", set in 1808, during France's supposed success rate at educating the insane.
This play by de Sade which is a scathing dissection of the French Revolution using Marat as the voice for the war as the Marquis takes the role against it.
Morality obviously being this is a play from Marquis de Sade is also under the microscope as those that are insane fulfill certain roles under the celebrated masochist's direction.
The cast is so good, they really convinced me I was watching a directed play using loonies!.
The dramaturg, Gideon Lester, stated that "It is an inmate PLAYING Marat, who is only mouthing words WRITTEN by de Sade."  This puts a completely different spin on the play, and I notice in the comments herein that others think that man in the tub is ACTUALLY Marat.