Marat Sade 高端奢华香水 - 持久留香，适合晚宴、约会、商务场合的优雅之选

I’ve had this movie on my Watchlist for almost two years now, eagerly seeking a re-viewing, but Amazon insisted on saying that it was not available at my location (also, this is the same message from rival video services). Suddenly, one day it was available if I signed up for the “ScreenPix” channel. I checked, and another movie, one by Francois Truffaut, that had also been on my Watchlist for two years was available. The monthly subscription, at least for the first six months is nominal, so I said YES, even though I am growing leery of monthly subscription channels. (This one is now my third, with the other two being Curiosity and BBC Select.) Enough of that, I did finally cherish the re-viewing of this classic film.I first saw “Marat-Sade” as a play at the one and only alt-theater in Atlanta in the 1970’s: Kelly’s Seed and Feed. I was watching a play of a play within a play. The play was written by Peter Weiss. The movie version, which I would see at a latter date in the ‘70’s, was directed by Peter Brooke and released in 1967. Both versions were/are edgy and brilliant, toying with that perennial human theme: are the crazies inside the asylum, or outside?Charenton still exists! It is the asylum named in the full version of the title to this play/film: “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 name of the facility has been changed to Esquirol Hospital. It is east of Paris, a mere 37 km for Disneyland, Paris. I’ll leave it to others to draw the congruencies. And the Marquis de Sade really was a patient there, from 1801 to 1814, tossed there by his political opponents, without a trial, for having written “Justine and Juliette.”Jean-Paul Marat was one of the giants of the French Revolution and, like Danton and Robespierre, was consumed by it. The knife that ended his life was not the guillotine, but one held by a fellow card-carrying member of the Revolution, though of a more “moderate” faction, the Girondin. Her name was Charlotte Corday. She would be executed by guillotine a mere four days after killing Marat. No lengthy appeals, there. Glenda Jackson plays an excellent version of Corday, from Caen, which would be a first-day objective of British forces on D-Day, and take a month and its utter destruction to “secure,” (not a good movie theme). I was smitten by Jackson’s acting ability ever since seeing her in Ken Russell’s 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love,” thereafter being taunted with the line: “Got a bit of mud on your hands tonight, did ya, Johnny?”The play/movie is set in the year 1808… a much more enlightened period, you understand. Clifford Rose provides a good characterization of Monsieur Coulmier, who believes that the best therapy for the insane is the arts, and he is an advocate of the Declaration of Human Rights. “We don’t believe in locking up patients…” though they are, and the truncheon is never far away if they get out of hand. Coulmier, along with Mme. Coulmier and their daughter sit inside the asylum, to show their solidarity, I guess, with the patients in these more enlightened days… a decision they will regret.Ah, the control, that still resonates today. Coulmier has encouraged de Sade, most memorably played by Patrick Magee, to say anything he wants within the play… well, within reason of course. “Didn’t we agree to delete that scene?” Coulmier will ask (demand!) a few times. De Sade really is the only sane one!“What is the point of a revolution without general copulation…” is perhaps the most memorable line from one of the many songs that are interspersed throughout the play. Another great dictum is the subject quote, usually rephrased now: “Your lower wages are good for the economy.”“I am the Revolution,” proclaims Marat at one point. And isn’t that always the problem, as the circle of those you can trust becomes more constrained… and one by one the traitors are led off to the guillotine?De Sade at the end, no doubt reflecting the beliefs of Weiss himself, says: “We take the great propositions to bits, as well as their opposites, to see how they really work.”A movie as relevant for 2022 as it was in the ‘60’s. Bless “ScreenPix,” whoever they might be, for giving me the opportunity to view this great movie one more time. 6-stars.