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)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is one of a number of films that came out in the late 60s early 70s that challenged society at the time. 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. I managed to find a copy of the DVD and we watched it several times together. She was so blown away she nearly quit the part because of the perceived difficulty.This is not an easy production to watch and its intensity profound, its finale frightening. The acting, particularly Patrick Magee, is spell binding.Others have commented on plot and substance but in my mind they are secondary to the sheer brilliance of concept, screenplay, and execution. This is a production for theatre people. The casual viewer will be bored. But IMHO one of the great works of all time.

The play absolutely deserves every award it has received. It's a serious but blackly humorous -- or humorously black -- discussion of politics, philosophy, and just what constitutes sanity, with enough madness to hold our attention and enough roots in the real world that we can't easily dismiss the points it makes.In the film there are few directorial choice that I might quibble with, and there is one (not very important) change I definitely disagree with... 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. If you can't, or if you want to revisit it, the film isn't too far behind.

The date is July 13, 1808, exactly 15 years after the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bathtub by 24 year old Charlotte Corday. 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. The players include a recovering paranoiac, a narcoleptic also suffering from "melancholia," a sex maniac, a former priest, a former prostitute, and a patient so incensed by his role that he is confined to a straight-jacket the entire time. As the play progresses, delving into the political and social unrest of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, the players discuss and debate the purpose of revolution, the horrors of war, the futility of activism, the need for equality, the impossibility of equality, the desire for freedom, the importance of individuality, and the relationship between murder and sexual passion. To start with.Oh, and it's a musical too.This is a great movie. One of the most intellectually challenging and rewarding movies I've ever seen. Directed by Peter Brook and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's a filmed version of Peter Weiss' play of the same name. It demands a lot of a viewer. Once it starts, it doesn't give you much room to breathe. It just takes off running and you are forced to keep up with it. It's one of the few movies I've ever seen where I was agreeing and disagreeing with every main character at various points. It's almost too much to take in in one sitting. I've seen it several times and I still feel like there's more to get out of it. I knew next to nothing about the French Revolution going in, but I still felt like I understood the issues at hand. They can just as easily apply to modern American society.The acting is uniformly excellent. The three main players--Patrick Magee (de Sade), Ian Richardson (Marat), and Glenda Jackson (Corday)--are all outstanding. Magee brings a unique humanity to a man largely considered by history to be a savage pervert. Richardson's Marat is heartbreaking. Endlessly staring ahead, he knows his cause is probably lost but can't give up on it. Jackson is stunning as both the impassioned Corday and the patient desperately trying to spit out her lines before she falls asleep again. There isn't a note out of place in the whole cast. 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. I wasn't sure I liked it until the second time I watched it. But I couldn't stop thinking about it after the first. It's disturbing, frightening, funny and demanding (sometimes all at the same time), but in my opinion, it's worth seeing at least once.

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. Monsieur Coulmier(Clifford Rose)is the mediator watching de Sade's behavior regarding what his script can and can not say. Blasphemy in this supposed golden age of France can not be warranted so Coulmier, with the assistance of nuns and guards inside, try to keep the deranged--and de Sade--in check.The play itself is told through not only the characters written on page, but from the insane themselves who often intervene on their own behalf. The ending is a fine slap in the face of the so-called success the French asylums seemed to have employed as the maniacs, after finishing, attack all the normal folk inside(two aristocratic women are audience members inside the cell--what were they thinking?)as Marquis relishes the chaos with glee.The staged film is disturbing, bleak, but profound and spellbinding. The way the camera moves throughout the cell(and several shots through the bars and on the darkened audience outside the cell)is hypnotic and deeply luridly fascinating. The cast is so good, they really convinced me I was watching a directed play using loonies!