La Marseillaise:  A Chronicle of Certain Events
Relative to the Fall of The Monarchy

Directed by Jean Renoir (1938)

 

La Marseillaise is a film by Jean Renoir, made in 1938.  Renoir, the son of Auguste Renoir the great French impressionist painter, is often described as one of the greatest film directors of all time.  At the time he made this film, France was beset with domestic and foreign problems.  At home, political instability and class conflict was acute and threatened to bring France to the brink of collapse.  Reacting to the threat of native fascism, the parties of the Left had joined together in 1936 to form a governing coalition known as Popular Front, headed by Leon Blum.  By the end of 1938, however, the Popular Front had collapsed and with it, much of the stability it had restored.  The great threat from abroad was the expansionism of a rearmed Nazi Germany.  French anxieties sharpened that year when Austrian was "incorporated" into Germany.  Amid these circumstances, Renoir hoped that his new film about the French Revolution would rejuvenate national pride and unity, just as revolutionary France had rallied in 1792 to repel invading armies of Austria and Prussia.  As one critic put it, La Marseillaise may be viewed as "a film celebrating the union of the French nation, the Rights of Man and Citizen." 

 Nevertheless, Renoir was interested in using history accurately, and the film is based on considerable historical research.  The director and his collaborators drew on the cahiers of grievances, newspapers, the minutes of political clubs, and other primary historical sources as well as on secondary accounts.  As Renoir himself remarked:  "It's the only film in my career in which I applied myself to what's known as research documentation....I wrote very little dialogue...I found three quarters of it amongst the documents."

 Major episodes in the film:

 Versailles, July 14, 1789.  Louis XVI is informed that a crowd of Parisians has taken the Bastille. “Is it a riot?” he asks.  “No, sire, a revolution.”

 In the countryside of Provence, June 1790.  Jean Roux, a poor peasant, is caught catching a pigeon and is taken before a local judge.  Unmoved by the pleas of Roux and the village mayor (a worthy bourgeois), the aristocratic judge sentences Roux to the galleys for his poaching.  Roux, however, escapes into the mountains where he meets up with two other men (Arnaud and Bonnier) and an embittered priest.  When they learn that the Revolution has begun, all but Roux return to town.

 Marseilles, October 1790.  Local revolutionaries, including members of both the middle and lower classes, decide to seize a nearby fort that is still under the command of old-regime aristocratic officers.  Using a wine barrel as a "Trojan horse," the revolutionaries gain entrance to the fort.  The commander, Marquis de Saint-Laurent, surrenders the fort without a fight.

 Coblenz (Germany), 1792.  A group of emigres, including the Marquis de Saint-Laurent, discuss the possibility of returning to France once the Revolution is defeated.  While most seem convinced that the Prussians under the Duke of Brunswick will soon be victorious, Saint-Laurent remains skeptical and feels that the Revolution will not easily be overcome.

 Valenciennes (northeastern France), April 1792.  Near the border, two French soldiers watch deserters and refugees pass by their post.  Troubled by this and the shortage of supplies, they suspect that the sympathies of their aristocratic officers may lay with the Austrians.

 Marseilles, Spring 1792.  At the Jacobin Club citoyenne (citizeness) Louise Vauclair denounces the treachery of the King and the Queen.  Outraged and offended, several bourgeois members storm out of the meeting.  The remaining members decide to send a battalion of volunteers to Paris to defend the city against the impending invasion by the Prussians.  It was also decided that only respectable men without debts will be allowed to join.  Bonnier is troubled because he has debts and family obligations.  But when his mother suggests a way to settle his debts, he joins up.

 May-July, 1792.  The battalion of volunteers from Marseilles (known as féderés) makes the long march north to Paris.  The trip is eventful.  At Paris they are welcomed and participate in a revolutionary festival.  A quarrel with a group of aristocrats leads to a bit of sword play, which is broken up by the rain.  Meanwhile at Court, Louis gives way to the wishes of Marie-Antoinette and moves to accept the Brunswick Manifesto, which calls for the death of revolutionary leaders once the monarchy is restored in full by the Prussian and Austrian forces.  Next, Bonnier strikes up a romance with a Parisian by the name of Louison.  A piece of street theater they attend satirizes the growing split between the King and the people.

 Paris, August 10,1792.  Revolutionary troops prepare to storm the Tuileries palace.  Roederer, an officer of the municipal government of Paris, convinces the King to leave the palace and seek the protection of the Legislative Assembly.  After the King departs, the Swiss guards and others remaining loyal to Louis declare their determination to defend the palace and defeat the insurrectionary forces.  After a few of the guards are persuaded to join the revolutionaries, a fierce battle breaks out between the King's troops and the revolutionary forces.  Bonnier is wounded and dies in the arms of his sweetheart.  The King's forces are at first successful in beating back the assault on the palace but are eventually overwhelmed when the revolutionary troops are reinforced by the volunteers from Marseilles and sans-culottes from Paris.  Now victorious, the revolutionary troops begin the summary execution of their prisoners.  Roederer orders a halt to the executions, but not before many of the Swiss have been shot.  Then, the remaining members of the Marseilles battalion march off with the citizen army to fight the Prussians and help secure the victory at Valmy.

 

Aspects of the film for study

The portrayal of ordinary people.   The representation of force and violenence   Unity vs. social antagonism and class conflict.   The varied responses of the aristocrats to the     Revolution.   Renoir's view of the Revolution - moderate, idealized,      mythical, distorted?   Why did Renoir choose to end the film in 1792?   The character and role of Bonnier, of Arnaud.    The portrayal of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.