As Director of the Clinic of Charenton...
...I should like to welcome you
to this salon.
To one of our residents a vote of
thanks is due Monsieur de Sade...
...who wrote and has produced this play for your
delectation and for our patients' rehabilitation.
We ask your kindly indulgence for a cast
never on stage before coming to Charenton...
...but each inmate, I can assure you,
will try to pull his weight.
We're modern, enlightened and
we don't agree with locking up patients.
We prefer therapy through
education and especially art...
...so that our hospital may play its part faithfully following
according to our lights the Declaration of Human Rights.
I agree with our author, Monsieur de Sade,
that his play set in our modern bath house...
...would be marred by all these instruments
for mental and physical hygiene.
Quite on the contrary,
they set the scene...
...for in Monsieur de Sade's play, he has
tried to show how Jean-Paul Marat died...
...and how he waited in his bath before
Charlotte Corday came knocking at his door.
Distinguished visitors, let us go back
to the France of fifteen years ago.
Recall the greatest shock
of modern times...
...those golden victories,
those scarlet crimes.
The force that shattered
every institution...
...that global earthquake,
the French Revolution!
None of us knew a revolutionary
more passionate then Marat.
But was he the people's friend,
or freedom's enemy?
A writer of books with hope...
...or the most vicious
butcher of his age?
Marat the good or bad?
The choice is hard.
Let us hear Marat
debating with de Sade.
Two champions wrestling
with each others' views.
How do we judge the winner?
You must chose.
Here is Marat,
back from the death.
He wears a bandage
around his head.
His flesh burns,
it is yellow as cheese...
...because disfigured by a skin disease.
And only water
cooling every limb...
...prevents his fever
from consuming him.
To act this weighty role,
we chose a lucky paranoic.
One of those who've made unprecedented strides
since we introduced them to hydrotherapy.
This one was with him
to the very end.
Simonne Evrard,
his dogged lady friend.
Here's Charlotte Corday,
waiting for her entry.
A country girl,
her family landed gentry.
Unfortunately the girl who plays the role
here has sleeping sickness, also melancholia.
Our hope must be for this afflicted soul
that she does not forget her role.
Her friend is Monsieur Duperret,
you'll note his upperclass toupee.
This actor's good,
though subdued to attacks...
...one of our brightest sexual maniacs.
Jailed for taking a radical view
of anything you can name...
...a former priest,
Jacques Roux.
Ally of Marat's revolution...
...but unfortunately the censor's cut
most of his rabble-rousing theme.
Our moral guardians
found it too extreme.
- I...
- Ah! Ah!
And now our vocalists:
Cucurucu...
...Polpoch...
...Kokol...
...and on the streets no longer,
Rossignol.
Now meet this gentleman
from high society...
...who under the lurid star of notoriety
came to live with us just five years ago.
It's to his genius
that we owe this show.
The former Marquis, Monsieur de Sade...
...whose books were banned,
his essays barred...
...while he's been persecuted
and reviled...
...thrown into jail and
for some years exiled.
The introduction's over, now the play
of Jean-Paul Marat can get under way.
Tonight the date is the thirteenth
of July eighteen-o-eight.
And on this night,
our cast intend...
...showing how fifteen years ago...
...night without end
fell on this man...
...this invalid.
And you are going
to see him bleed...
...and see this woman,
after careful thought...
...take up the dagger
and cut him short.
Homage to Marat!
Four years after the Revolution
and the old king's execution...
Four years after, remember how
those courtiers took their final bow...
String up every aristocrat...
Out with the priests,
let them live on their fat...
Four years after we started fighting,
Marat keeps on with his writing...
Four years after the Bastille fell,
he still recalls the old battle yell...
Down with all of the ruling class...
Throw all the generals
out on their arse...
Long live the Revolution!
Marat, we won't dig
our own bloody graves!
Marat, we've got
to be clothed and fed!
Marat, we're sick of working like slaves!
Marat, we've got to
have cheaper bread!
We crown you with these leaves, Marat,
because of the laurel shortage.
The laurels all went to decorate
academics, generals and heads of state.
And their heads are enormous.
Good old Marat...
By your side we'll stand or fall...
You're the only one
that we can trust at all...
Don't scratch your scabs,
or they'll never get any better.
Four years he fought
and he fought unafraid...
Sniffing down traitors,
by traitors betrayed...
Marat in the courtroom,
Marat underground...
Sometimes the otter
and sometimes the hound...
Fighting all the gentry
and fighting every priest...
Businessman, the bourgeois,
the military beast...
Marat always ready
to stifle every scheme...
Of the sons of the arse-licking
dying regime...
We've got new generals,
our leaders are new...
They sit and they argue
and all that they do...
Is sell their own colleagues
and ride on their backs...
And jail them, and break them,
or give them all the axe...
Screaming in language
that no one understands...
Of rights that we grabbed
with our own bleeding hands...
When we wiped out the bosses
and stormed through the wall...
Of the prison they told us
would outlast us all...
Marat, we're poor
and the poor stay poor...
Marat, don't make
us wait anymore...
We want our rights
and we don't care how...
We want our revolution...
Now...
The Revolution...
...came and went...
...and unrest was replaced
by discontent.
Who controls the markets?
Who locks up the granaries?
Who got the loot
from the palaces?
Who sits tight on the estates that were
going to be divided between the poor?
Who keeps us prisoner?
Who locks us in?
We're all normal
and we want our freedom.
- Freedom.
- Freedom.
Freedom. Freedom.
Monsieur de Sade.
It appears I must act
as the voice of reason.
What's going to happen when right at the start
of the play the patients are so disturbed?
Please keep your production
under control.
Times have changed,
times are different...
...and these days we should take
an objective view of old grievances.
They are... uh...
part of history.
And history, I might add...
...history is not simply the story of
the undisciplined common people.
Let us consider, instead,
true history:..
...the exemplary lives of the men
who made France great.
Here sits Marat,
the people's choice...
...dreaming and listening
to his fever's voice.
You see his hand
curled round his pen...
...and the screams from
the street are all forgotten.
He stares at the map of France,
eyes marching from town to town...
...while you wait...
Corday, Corday.
Corday!
...while you wait for this woman
to cut him down.
And none of us...
And none of us...
And none of us can alter the fact,
do what we will...
...that she stands outside Marat's door...
...ready and poised to kill.
Poor...
...Marat...
...in your bathtub, your body
soaked saturated with poison.
Poison spurting
from your hiding place...
...poisoning the people, arousing them
to looting and murder.
Marat...
...I have come, I,
Charlotte Corday, from Caen...
...where a huge army
of liberation is massing...
...and, Marat, I come
as the first of them...
...Marat.
Once both of us saw
the world must go...
And change as we read
in great Rousseau...
But change meant
one thing to you I see...
And something quite different to me...
The very same words
we both have said...
To give our ideals
wings to spread...
But my way was true...
While for you...
The highway led over
mountains of dead...
Once both of us spoke
a single tongue...
Of brotherly love
we sweetly sung...
But love meant
one thing to you I see...
And something quite different to me...
But now I'm aware
that I was blind...
And now I can see
into your mind...
And so I say no...
...and I go
to murder you, Marat...
And free all mankind...
Simonne!
Simonne!
More cold water. Change my bandage.
Oh, this itching is unbearable.
Jean-Paul, don't scratch yourself,
you'll tear your skin to shreds...
...give up writing, Jean-Paul,
it won't do any good.
My call. My fourteenth of July call
to the people of France.
Jean-Paul, please be more careful,
look how red the water's getting.
And what's a bath full of blood
compared to the bloodbaths still to come?
Once we thought a few hundred
corpses would be enough...
...then we saw thousands
were still too few...
...and today we can't
even count all the dead.
Are there any of
our enemies left anywhere?
Everywhere,
everywhere you look.
There they are. Up on the rooftops.
Down in the cellars. Behind the walls. Hypocrites!
They wear the people's cap on their heads,
but their underwear's embroidered with crowns...
...and if so much as a shop gets looted
they squeal: "Beggars, villains, gutter rats!"
Simonne, my head's on fire.
I can't breathe.
There is a rioting mob inside me.
Simonne!
I am the Revolution.
Corday's first visit.
I have come to speak
to Citizen Marat.
I have an important message for him
about the situation in Caen, my home...
...where his enemies are gathering.
We don't want any visitors.
Nous voulons la paix.
If you've got anything
to say to Marat...
...put it in writing.
What I have to say
cannot be said in writing.
I...
...want...
...to stand...
...in front of him and...
...look at him.
I want...
...to see his body tremble
and his forehead...
...bubble with sweat.
I want to thrust right
between his ribs...
...the dagger which I carry
between my breasts.
I shall...
...take the dagger...
...in both hands and...
...push it...
...through his flesh,
and then I shall hear...
...what he has to say...
...to me.
Not yet, Corday.
You must come to
his door three times.
Song and mime of
Corday's arrival in Paris!
Charlotte Corday
came to our town...
Heard the people talking,
saw the banners wave...
Weariness had almost
dragged her down...
Weariness had dragged her down...
Charlotte Corday had to be brave...
She could never stay
at comfortable hotels...
Had to find a man
with knives to sell...
Had to find a man with knives...
Charlotte Corday
passed the pretty stores...
Perfume and cosmetics,
powders and wigs...
Unguent for curing syphilis sores...
Unguent for curing sores...
She saw a dagger...
Its handle was white...
Walked into the cutlery seller's door...
When she saw the dagger,
the dagger was bright...
Charlotte saw the dagger was bright...
When the man asked her:
"Who is it for..?"
It is common knowledge
to each one of you...
Charlotte smiled and
paid him his forty sous...
Charlotte smiled
and paid forty sous...
Charlotte Corday walked alone...
Paris birds sang sugar calls...
Charlotte walked down
lanes of stone...
Through the haze
from perfume stalls...
Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene...
Heard the singing guillotine...
Don't soil your pretty little shoes...
The gutter's deep and red...
Climb up, climb up,
and ride along with me...
The tumbrel driver said...
But she never said a word...
Never turned her head...
Don't soil your pretty little pants...
I only go one way...
Climb up, climb up,
and ride along with me...
There's no gold coach today...
But she never said a word...
Never turned her head...
What kind of town is this?
The sun can hardly pierce the haze,
not...
...a haze made out of rain and fog,
but...
...steaming thick and hot
like the mist in a slaughterhouse.
Why are they howling?
What are they dragging
through the streets?
They carry stakes, but what's
impaled on those stakes?
Why do they hop?
What are they dancing for?
Why are they racked with laughter?
Why do the children scream?
What are those heaps they fight over,
those...
...heaps with eyes and mouths?
What kind of town is this...
...hacked buttocks
lying in the street?
What are all these faces?
Soon...
...these faces will close around me.
These eyes and mouths will call me...
...to join them!
Now it's happening and
you can't stop it happening.
The people used to suffer everything,
now they take their revenge.
You are watching that revenge, and you don't
remember that you drove the people to it.
Now you protest, but it's too late
to start crying over spilt blood.
What is the blood of these aristocrats compared
with the blood the people shed for you?
Many of them had their throats
slit by your gangs.
Many of them died more slowly
in your workshops.
So what is this sacrifice compared with the
sacrifices the people made to keep you fat?
What are a few looted mansions
compared with their looted lives?
You don't care...
...if the foreign armies with whom you're making
secret deals march in and massacre the people.
You hope the people will be wiped out,
so you can flourish...
...and when they are wiped out, not a muscle
will twitch in your puffy bourgeois faces...
...which are now all twisted up
with anger and disgust.
Monsieur de Sade,
we can't allow this...
...you really can't call this education.
It isn't making my patients any better,
they're all becoming over-excited.
After all, we invited the public here to show
them that our patients are not all social lepers.
We only show these people massacred,
because this indisputably occurred.
Please calmly watch these barbarous displays
which could not happen nowadays.
The men of that time mostly now demised
were primitive, we are more civilised.
The execution of the aristocrats.
Look at them, Marat...
...these men who once
owned everything.
Now that their pleasures
have been taken away...
...the guillotine saves them
from endless boredom.
Gaily they offer their heads
as if for coronation.
Is not that the pinnacle
of perversion?
The execution of the king!
Conversation concerning
life and death.
I read in your books, de Sade,
in one of your immortal works...
...that the animating force
of nature is destruction...
...and that our only instrument
for measuring life is death.
Correct, Marat.
But man has given
a false importance to death.
Any animal, plant or man that dies
adds to Nature's compost heap...
...becomes the manure without which
nothing could grow, nothing could be created.
Death is simply part of the process.
Every death,
even the cruellest death...
...drowns in the total
indifference of Nature.
Nature would watch unmoved...
...if we destroyed the entire human race.
I hate Nature...
...this passionless spectator, this unbreakable
iceberg-face that can bear everything...
...this goads us to greater
and greater acts.
But though I hate this goddess...
...I see that the greatest acts
in history have followed her laws.
Nature teaches a man to fight
for his own happiness.
And if he must kill
to gain, that happens...
...while then the murder is natural.
Haven't we always crushed down
those weaker than ourselves?
Haven't we torn at their throats
with continuous villainy and lust?
Haven't we experimented in our laboratories
before applying the final solution?
Man is a destroyer.
But if he kills and takes no pleasure
in it, he's a machine.
He should destroy with passion,
like a man.
Let me remind you of
the execution of Damiens...
...after his unsuccessful attempt
to assassinate Louis the Fifteenth.
Remember how Damiens died?
How gentle the guillotine is
compared with his torture?
It lasted four hours
while the crowd goggled...
...and Casanova at an upper window
felt under the skirts of the ladies watching.
His chest, arms, thighs
and calves were slit open.
Molten lead was
poured into each slit...
...boiling oil they poured over him,
burning wax, sulphur.
They burnt off his hands...
...they tied ropes to
his arms and to his legs...
...and harnessed him to four horses
and geed them up.
They pulled at him for an hour...
...but they'd never done it before,
and he wouldn't...
...come apart...
...until they sawed through
his shoulders and hips.
So he lost the first arm,
and then the second arm...
...and he watched
what they did to him...
...and then he turned to us, and he shouted out
so that everyone could understand.
And when he lost the first leg
and then the second leg...
...he still lived.
And in the end, he hung there,
a bloody torso with a nodding head...
...just groaning...
...and staring at the crucifix which
the father confessor held up to him.
That...
...was a festival...
...with which today's
festivals can't compete.
Even our inquisition
has no meaning nowadays.
Now they are all official.
We condemn to death
without emotion...
...and there's no singular,
personal death to be had...
...only an anonymous, cheapened death
which we could dole out to entire nations...
...on a mathematical basis...
...until the time comes for all life
to be extinguished.
Citizen Marquis...
...you may sit as a judge
in our tribunals...
...you may have fought with us last September when we dragged
out of the gaols the aristocrats who were plotting against us...
...but you still talk like a grand seigneur...
...and what you call the indifference of Nature
is your own lack of compassion.
Compassion, Marat, is the property
of the privileged classes.
When the giver bends to the beggar,
he throbs with contempt.
To protect his riches,
he pretends to be moved...
...and his gift to the beggar
is no more than a kick.
No, no, Marat,
no small emotions please.
Your feelings were never petty.
For you, just as for me...
...only the most extreme
actions matter.
If I am extreme, I am not extreme
in the same way as you.
Against Nature's silence,
I use action.
In the vast indifference,
I invent a meaning.
I don't watch unmoved,
I intervene...
...and I say that this
and this are wrong...
...and I work to alter them and
to improve them, because the impo...
The important thing is to pull
yourself up by your own hair...
...to turn yourself inside out...
...and see the whole world
with fresh eyes.
Marat's liturgy.
Remember how it used to be.
The kings were our dear fathers
under whose care we lived in peace...
...and their deeds were glorified
by official poets.
Piously the simpleminded breadwinners
passed on the lesson to their children.
The kings are our dear fathers...
...under whose care we live in peace.
The kings are our dear fathers...
...under whose care we live in peace.
And the children
repeated the lesson.
Suffer!
Suffer as he suffered on the cross
for it is the will of God.
And anyone believes what
they hear over and over again...
...and so the poor, instead of bread, made do with a
picture of the bleeding, scourged and nailed-up Christ...
...and prayed to that image
of their helplessness.
And the priests said:..
..."Raise your hands to heaven,
bend your knees..."
"...bear your suffering without complaint.
Pray for those who torture you..."
"...for prayer and blessing are the only ladder
which you can climb to Paradise!"
And so they chained down
the poor in their ignorance...
...so that they couldn't stand up
and fight their bosses...
...who ruled in the name
of the lie of divine right.
Monsieur de Sade!
I must interrupt this argument.
We agreed to make
some cuts in this passage.
After all, nobody now objects to the church, since
our emperor is surrounded by high-ranking clergy...
...and since it's been proved over and over again
that the poor need the spiritual comfort of the priests.
There's no question
of anyone being oppressed.
Quite on the contrary, everything's
done to relieve suffering with... uh...
...clothing collections... uh... medical aid
and... uh... soup kitchens...
...and in this very clinic, we're dependent on the
goodwill, not only of the temporal government...
...but even more on the goodness
and understanding of the church...
...and particularly of our friend,
Monsieur Laday, eh?
If our performance causes aggravation...
...we hope you'll swallow down
your indignation...
...and please remember that we show
only those things that happened long ago.
Remember things were
very different then...
...of course, today
we're all God-fearing men.
Pray!
Pray!
O pray to him!
Our Satan who art in hell...
...our Lord be thy name.
Thy kingdom come
on earth as it is in hell.
Forgive us our good deeds
and deliver us from holiness.
Lead us...
Lead us into temptation...
...over and over.
Amen.
The regrettable incident
you've just seen was unavoidable...
...indeed foreseen by our playwright...
...who managed to compose these
extra lines in case the need arose.
Please understand...
...this man was once the very
well-thought-of abbot of a monastery.
It should remind us all
that as they say...
...God moves like a man
in a mysterious way.
Before deciding what is right
and what is wrong...
...first we must find out
what we are.
I do not know myself.
No sooner have I discovered something
than I begin to doubt it...
...and I have to destroy it again.
What we do is just a shadow
of what we want to do...
...and the only truths we can point to are
the ever-changing truths of our own experience.
I don't know if I'm hangman...
...or victim...
...for I imagine the most horrible tortures...
...and as I describe them,
I suffer them myself.
There's nothing I could not do...
...and everything fills me
with horror.
And I see that other people, too,
turn themselves into strangers...
...and are capable of unpredictable acts.
A little time ago,
I saw my tailor...
...a gentle, cultured man
who liked to talk philosophy.
I saw him foam at the mouth
and screaming with rage...
...attack a man from Switzerland.
A large man heavily armed.
And destroy him utterly.
And then I saw him tear open
the breast of the defeated man...
...take out his still beating heart...
...and swallow it.
A mad animal.
Man's a mad animal.
I'm a thousand years old and in my time
I've helped commit a million murders.
The earth is spread...
The earth is spread thick
with squashed human guts.
We few survivors...
We few survivors...
...walk over a quaking bog of corpses.
Always under our feet,
every step we take...
...rotted bones, ashes, matted hair
under our feet...
...broken teeth,
skulls split open.
A mad animal.
I'm a mad animal.
Prisons don't help.
Chains don't help.
I escape...
...through all the walls...
...through all the slime
and the splintered bones.
You'll see it all one day.
I'm not through yet.
I have plans.
We invented...
We invented...
We invented the Revolution...
...but we didn't know
how to run it.
Look...
...everyone wants to keep
something from the past.
A souvenir of the old regime.
So this man decides to keep a painting,
this man keeps his mistress...
...this man keeps his horse,
this man keeps his garden.
That man keeps his farmlands,
that man keeps his house in the country...
...that man keeps his factories, that man
couldn't bear to part with his shipyards.
That man keeps his army...
...and that one keeps his king.
And so we sit here...
...and write into the declaration
of the rights of man...
...the sanctity of private property.
And now we'll see
where that leads.
Every man's equally free to fight...
...fraternally and with
equal arms, of course.
Every man his own millionaire.
Man against man,
group against group...
...in happy mutual robbery.
And we...
...sit here more oppressed
than when we begun...
...and they think that
the revolution's been won?
The people's reaction.
Why do they have the gold and...
Why do they have the power...
Why, why, why, why, why...
...do they have the friends
at the top..?
Why do they have
the jobs at the top..?
We've got nothing,
always had nothing...
Nothing but holes and
millions of them...
Living in holes, dying in holes...
Holes in our bellies and
holes in our clothes...
Marat, we're poor...
And the poor stay poor...
Marat, don't make
us wait anymore...
We want our rights
and we don't care how...
We want our revolution now...
Observe how easily
a crowd turns mob...
...through ignorance
of its wise ruler's job.
Rather than bang an empty
drum of protest...
...citizens be dumb.
Work for and trust
the powerful few...
...what's best for them
is best for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to see
people and government in harmony...
...a harmony which I should say
we've very nearly reached today.
And now nobility meets grace.
Our author brings them
face to face.
The beautiful and brave
Charlotte Corday.
The handsome Monsieur Duperret.
In Caen where she spent
the best years of her youth...
...in a convent devoted
to the way of truth...
...Duperret's name
she heard them recommend...
...as a most sympathetic
helpful friend.
Confine your passion
to the lady's mind.
Your love's platonic,
not the other kind.
Ah, dearest Duperret,
what can we do?
How can we stop
this terrible calamity?
In the streets, everyone is saying
Marat's to be tribune and dictator.
Still he pretends his iron grip will
relax as soon as the worst is over.
But we know what
Marat really wants:..
...anarchy and confusion.
Dearest Charlotte,
you must return...
...return to your friends the pious nuns
and live in prayer and contemplation.
You cannot fight the hard-faced
enemies surrounding us.
You talk about Marat,
but who is this Marat?
A street salesman,
a funfair barker...
...a layabout from Corsica.
Sorry, I mean Sardinia.
Marat?
The name sounds Jewish to me.
Perhaps derived from the waters
of Marah in the Bible.
But who listens to him anyway?
Only the mob down in the streets.
Up here Marat can be
no danger to us.
Dearest...
...Duperret...
...you're trying
to test me, but...
...I know what I must do.
Duperret...
...go to Caen.
Barbaroux and Buzot are
waiting for you there.
Go now and travel quickly.
Do not wait till this evening...
...for this evening,
everything will be too late.
Dearest Charlotte, my place is here.
How could I leave the city which holds you?
And why should I run...
And why should run...
...now when it can't last
much longer?
Already the English lie off
Dunkirk and Toulon.
- The Prussians have occu...
- Spaniards.
Spaniards have
occupied Roussillon.
- Paris is...
- Mayence.
Mayence is surrounded
by the Prussians.
Cond and Valenciennes
have fallen to the Russians.
- The Austrians!
- The Austrians!
The Vende is up in arms.
They can't hold out...
...much longer these fanatical upstarts
with no vision and no culture.
They can't hold out much longer.
No, dear Charlotte, here I stay...
...waiting for the promised day
when with Marat's mob interred...
...France once more speaks
the forbidden word:..
...Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom!
- Chain him!
- Freedom!
Freedom.
Do you hear that, Marat?
They all say they want
what's best for France.
My patriotism's bigger than yours.
They're all ready to die for
the honour of France.
Moderate or radical,
they're all after the taste of blood.
The luke-warm liberals
and the angry radicals...
...they all believe in
the greatness of France.
Marat, can't you see
this patriotism is lunacy?
Years ago, I left heroics
to the heroes...
...and I care no more for this country
than for any other country.
Take... care.
Long live Napolon and the nation!
Long live all emperors,
kings, bishops and popes!
Long live watery broth
and the straitjacket!
Long live Marat!
Long live the Revolution!
It's easy to get
mass movements going...
...movements that move
in vicious circles.
I don't believe in idealists
who charge down blind alleys.
I don't believe in any of the sacrifices
that have been made for any cause.
- I believe only in myself.
- I believe in the Revolution.
We have ragged out
the old tyrants.
And now we have new tyrants.
But still I believe in the Revolution.
The spoils have been
grabbed by businessmen...
...middlemen, financiers, salesmen,
operators, manipulators.
But the Revolution must continue.
Those fat monkeys
covered in banknotes...
Have champagne
and brandy on tap...
They're up to their eyeballs
in franc notes...
We're up to our noses in crap...
Those gorilla-mouthed fakers...
Are longing to see us all rot...
The gentry may lose a few acres...
But we lose the little we've got...
Revolution,
it's more like a ruin...
They're all stuffed
with glorious food...
They think about
nothing but screwing...
And we are the ones
who get screwed...
Pick up your arms!
Fight for your rights!
Grab what you need
and grab it now!
Or wait a hundred years and see
what the authorities arrange!
Up there they despise you, because you
never had the cash to learn to read and write.
You're good enough for the dirty
work of the Revolution...
...but they screw their noses up at you
because your sweat stinks.
You have to sit way down there,
so they won't have to see you.
And down there
in ignorance and stink...
...you're allowed to do your bit
towards bringing in the golden age...
...in which you'll all do
the same old dirty work.
Up there in the sunlight...
...their poets sing
about the power of life...
...and the expensive rooms
in which they scheme...
...are hung with exquisite paintings.
So stand up!
Defend yourselves from their whips!
Stand up!
Stand in front of them...
...and let them see how many
of you there are.
Do we have to listen
to this sort of thing?
We are citizens of
a new enlightened age.
We're all revolutionaries nowadays, but
this is plain treachery, we can't allow it.
The cleric you've been listening to...
...is that notorious priest, Jacques Roux...
...who to adopt
the new religious fashion...
...has quit the pulpit
and with earthier passion...
...rages from soapboxes.
A well-trained priest, his rhetoric
is slick to say the least.
'If you'd make paradise
your only chance...'
'...is not to build on clouds
but solid France.'
The mob eats from his hand while Roux knows
what he wants, but not what he should do.
Talk's cheap.
The price of action is colossal...
...so Roux decides to be the chief
apostle of Jean-Paul Marat.
Seems good policy...
...since Marat's heading
straight for Calvary...
...and crucifixion,
all good Christians know...
...is the most sympathetic way to go.
We demand the opening of
the granaries to feed the poor.
We demand the public ownership of
workshops and factories.
We demand the conversion
of the churches into schools...
...so that now at last something
useful may be taught in them.
We demand that everyone should do
all they can to put an end to war.
This damned war which is run
for the benefit of profiteers...
...and leads only to more wars.
We demand that the people who started
the war should pay the cost of it.
Once and for all, the idea of glorious victories
won by the glorious army must be wiped out.
Neither side is glorious.
On either side, they're just frightened
men messing their pants...
...and they all want
the same thing.
Not to lie under the earth...
...but to walk upon it...
...without crutches.
This is outright pacifism.
At this very moment, our soldiers are laying down their
lives for the freedom of the world and for our freedom.
This scene was cut.
Bravo, Jacques Roux!
I like your monk's habit.
Nowadays it's best to preach
revolution wearing a robe.
Marat, come out
and lead the people!
They're waiting for you!
It must be now!
For the Revolution
which burns up everything...
...in blinding brightness will only
last as long as a lightning flash.
Monsieur de Sade is whipped.
Marat!
Today they need you, because
you are going to suffer for them.
They need you and they honour
the urn which holds your ashes.
But tomorrow they will come back and
smash that urn, and they will say:..
..."Marat?
Who was Marat?"
Marat!
Now I will tell you about this
revolution which I helped to make.
When I lay in the Bastille,
my ideas were already formed.
In prison I created in my mind monstrous
representatives of a dying class.
My imaginary giants committed
desecrations and tortures.
I committed them myself.
And like them...
...allowed myself to be bound...
...and beaten.
And even now...
...I should like to take this beauty here
who stands there so expectantly...
...and let her beat me...
...while I talk to you
about the Revolution.
At first,
I saw in the revolution...
...a chance for a tremendous
outburst of revenge...
...an orgy greater than
all my dreams.
But then I saw, when I sat
in the courtroom myself...
...not as I had been before
a prisoner, but as a judge...
...I saw that I could not bring myself to
give the victim to the hangman.
I did everything I could to release
them or let them escape.
I saw that I was not capable of murder, though
murder had been the sole proof of my existence...
...and now...
...the very thought
of it horrifies me.
In September, when I watched the
official sacking of Carmelite Convent...
...I had to bend over
in the courtyard and vomit...
...as I watched my prophecies
coming true...
...and women running by, holding in their
dripping hands the severed genitals of men.
And as the months went by...
...and the tumbrels rode
regularly to the scaffold...
...and the blade dropped and was
winched up and dropped again...
...all the meaning drained out of this revenge.
It was inhuman...
...it was dull...
...and curiously technocratic.
And now, Marat...
...now I see where your
revolution is leading.
To the withering
of the individual man...
...to the death of choice,
to uniformity...
...to deadly weakness in a state which has no
contact with individuals, but which is impregnable.
And so I turn away.
I am one of those
who has to be defeated...
...but out of my defeat I want to seize
everything I can get with my own strength.
I step out of my place...
...and I watch what happens,
without joining in...
...observing, noting down
all my observations...
...and all around me...
...stillness.
And when I vanish...
...I want all trace of my existence
to be wiped out.
Simonne.
Simonne?
Why is it getting so dark?
Give me a fresh cloth for my forehead.
Put a new towel round my shoulders.
I don't know if I am
freezing or burning to death.
Simonne.
Fetch Bas,
so I can dictate my call...
...my call to the people of France.
Simonne, where are all my papers?
I saw them only a moment ago.
- Why is it getting so dark?
- They're here, can't you see, Jean-Paul?
Where's the ink?
Where's my pen?
Here's your pen, Jean-Paul...
...and here's the ink,
where it always is.
That was only a cloud
over the sun...
...or perhaps smoke.
They are burning the corpses.
Poor old Marat,
they hunt you down...
The bloodhounds are
sniffing all over the town...
Just yesterday your printing
press was smashed...
Now they're asking
your home address...
Poor old Marat...
They hunt you down...
The bloodhounds are sniffing
all over the town...
Poor old Marat,
in you we trust...
You work till your eyes
turn as red as rust...
But while you write,
they're on your track...
The boots mount the staircase,
the door's flung back...
Poor old Marat...
In you we trust...
You work till your eyes
turn as red as rust...
Poor old Marat,
we trust in you...
We want our rights...
And we don't care how...
We want our Revolution...
Now...
Now that these painful matters
have been clarified...
...let's turn and look upon
the sunny side.
Recall this couple
and their love so pure...
...she with her neatly-groomed coiffure...
...and her face intriguingly
pale and clear...
...and her eyes ashine
with the trace of a tear...
Her lips...
...sensual and ripe...
...seeming to silently
cry for protection...
...and his embraces
proving his affection.
See how he moves
with natural grace...
...and how his heart sprints on
at passion's pace.
Let's gaze at the sweet blending
of the strong and fair sex...
...before their heads
fall off their necks.
One day it will come to pass...
Man will live in harmony
with himself...
And with his fellow-man...
One day it will come...
...a society which will pool its energy to defend and
protect each person for the possession of each person...
...and in which each individual
although united with all others...
...only obeys himself
and stays free...
A society in which...
...every man is trusted with the right
of governing...
...himself himself...
One day it will come...
...a constitution in which
the natural inequalities of man...
...are subject to a higher order,
so that all...
...however varied their mental
and physical powers may be...
...by agreement legally
get their fair share...
Don't think you can beat them
without using force.
Don't be deceived...
...when our Revolution
has been finally stamped out...
...and they tell you
things are better now.
Even if there's no poverty to be seen,
because the poverty's been hidden...
...even if you got more wages and could afford
to buy more of these new and useless goods...
...and even if it seemed to you
that you never had so much...
...that is only the slogan of those
who have that much more than you.
Don't be taken in...
...when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and
say that there's no inequality worth speaking of...
...and no more reason for fighting.
If you believe them, they will be completely
in charge in their shining homes and granite banks...
...from which they rob the people of the world
under the pretence of bringing them freedom.
Watch out...
...for as soon as it pleases them, they will send
you out to protect their wealth in wars...
Freedom!
...whose weapons rapidly developed by servile
scientists will become more and more deadly...
...until they can with a flick of a finger
tear a million of you to pieces.
Freedom!
Freedom!
Lying there,
scratched and swollen...
...your brow burning,
in your world, your bath.
You still believe
that justice is possible?
You still believe all men are equal?
Do you still believe that all occupations
are equally satisfying, equally valuable?
And that no man wants to be
greater than the others?
How does the old song go?
One always bakes
the most delicate cakes.
Two is the really superb masseur.
Three sets your hair
with exceptional flair.
Four's brandy goes to the Emperor.
Five knows each trick
of advanced rhetoric.
Six bred a beautiful
brand-new rose.
Seven can cook
every dish in the book.
And eight cuts you
flawlessly elegant clothes.
You still believe that
these eight would be happy...
...if each of them could climb
so high, but no higher...
...before banging their
heads on equality?
If each could be only a small link
in a long and heavy chain?
You still believe that it's possible
to unite mankind...
...when already you see how the few idealists
who did join together in the name of harmony...
...are now out of tune...
...and would like to kill
each other over trifles?
But they aren't trifles.
They are matters of principle...
...and it's usual in a revolution for the half-hearted
and the fellow-travellers to be dropped.
We can't begin to build until we've
burnt the old buildings down...
...no matter how dreadful that may sound to those
who lounge contentedly toying with their scruples.
Listen.
Can you hear through the walls
how they plot and whisper?
Do you see how
they lurk everwhere?
Just waiting for
the chance to strike.
What has gone wrong with
the men who are ruling?
I'd like to know who
they think they are fooling.
They told us that torture
was over and gone...
...but everyone knows
the same torture goes on.
- The king's gone away.
- The priests emigrating.
- The nobles are buried...
- ...so why are we waiting?
Corday's second visit.
Now Charlotte Corday
stands outside Marat's door.
The second time she's tried.
I have come to deliver this letter in which
I ask again to be received by Marat.
I am unhappy and therefore
have a right to his aid.
- I have a right to his aid!
- Who is at the door, Simone?
A girl from Caen with a letter...
...a petitioner.
I won't let anyone in.
They only bring us trouble.
All these people with their
convulsions and complaints.
As if you had
nothing better to do...
...than be their lawyer...
and doctor... and confessor.
That's how it is, Marat.
That's how she sees
your revolution.
They have toothache,
so their teeth should be pulled.
Their soup's burnt.
They shout for better soup.
A woman finds her husband too short,
she wants a taller one.
A man finds his wife too skinny,
he wants a plumper one.
One man's shoes pinch,
but his neighbour's shoes fit comfortably.
A poet runs out of poetry
and desperately gropes for new images.
For hours an angler casts his line.
Why aren't the fish biting?
And so they join the revolution...
...thinking the revolution
will give them everything.
A fish, a poem,
a new pair of shoes...
...a new wife, a new husband,
and the best soup in the world.
So they storm all the citadels...
...and there they are,
and everything is just the same...
...no fish biting, verses botched,
shoes pinching...
...a worn and stinking
partner in bed...
...and the soup burnt.
And all that heroism which
drove us down to the sewers.
We can talk about it
to our grandchildren...
...if we have any grandchildren.
Marat, Marat, it's all in vain.
You studied the body
and probed the brain.
In vain you spent your energies...
...for how can a man
cure his own disease.
Marat, Marat,
where is our path?
Or is it not visible
from your bath?
Your enemies are closing in.
Without you,
the people can never win.
Marat, Marat, can you explain...
...how once in the daylight
your thought seemed plain.
Has your affliction left you dumb?
Your thoughts lie in shadows,
now night has come.
Marat's nightmare.
They are coming.
Listen to them...
...and look carefully at
these gathering figures.
Yes, I hear you,
all the voices I ever heard.
Yes, I see you...
...all the old faces.
Woe to the man who is different...
...who tries to break down
all the barriers.
Woe to the man who tries
to stretch the imagination of man.
He shall be mocked,
he shall be scourged...
...by the blinkered
guardians of morality.
You wanted enlightenment
and warmth...
...and so you studied light and heat.
You wondered how forces
can be controlled...
...so you studied electricity.
You wanted to know
what man is for...
...so you asked yourself,
"What is this soul..."
"...this dump for hollow ideals
and mangled morals?"
And you decided that
the soul is in the brain...
...and that it can learn to think.
For to you, the soul is
a practical thing...
...a tool for ruling
and mastering life.
And you came, one day,
to the Revolution...
...because you saw
the most important vision.
That our circumstances must be
changed fundamentally...
...and without these changes...
...everything we try to do
must fail.
Marat, we're poor...
...and the poor stay poor...
Marat, don't make...
...us wait anymore...
We want our rights...
...and we don't care how...
We want our Revolution...
...now...
Now Marat is still
in his bathtub confined...
...but politicians crowd
into his mind.
He speaks to them,
his last polemic fight...
...to say who should be tribune.
It is almost night.
- Down with Marat.
- Don't let him speak.
Listen to him,
he's got the right to speak.
- Long live Marat.
- Long live Robespierre.
Long live Danton.
Fellow citizens,
members of the National Assembly...
...our country is in danger.
From every corner of Europe,
armies invade us...
...led by profiteers who want to strangle us
and already quarrel over the spoils.
And what are we doing?
Our minister of war whose
integrity you never doubted...
...has sold the corn meant for our armies
for his own profit to foreign powers...
...and now it feeds the troops
who are invading us.
- Lies!
- Throw him out!
The chief of our army,
Dumouriez...
- Bravo!
- Long live Dumouriez!
...against whom I've warned you continually and whom you
recently hailed as a hero has gone over to the enemy.
Shame!
- Bravo!
- Liar!
Most of the generals who wear our uniform
are sympathetic with the emigrs...
...and when the emigrs return,
our generals will be out to welcome them.
Execute them!
- Down with Marat!
- Long live Marat!
Our trusted minister of finance,
the celebrated Monsieur Cambon...
...is issuing fake banknotes thus increasing inflation
and diverting a fortune into his own pocket.
Long live free enterprise.
And I am told that Perregeaux,
our most intelligent banker...
...is in league with the English, and in his armoured
vaults is organising a centre of espionage against us.
- That's quite enough!
- The people...
We agreed to make no mention of the guttersnipe
smears which these meant something in the past.
After all, we're living in
eighteen hundred and eight.
And today these men hold position of honour,
each of them was chosen firstly by the Emperor.
- Go on!
- Shut up, Marat!
- Shut his mouth!
- Long live Marat!
Our country is in danger.
We talk about France,
but who is France for?
We talk about freedom,
but who's this freedom for?
Members of the National Assembly...
...you will never shake off the past.
You will never understand the great
upheaval in which you find yourselves.
Why aren't there thousands of public seats in this assembly,
so anyone who wants can hear what's being discussed?
What is he trying to do?
Look who sits on the public benches.
Knitting-women, concierges and washer-women
with no one to employ them any more.
And who has he got on his side?
Pickpockets, layabouts, parasites who loiter
in the boulevards and hang around the cafs.
Wish we could.
Released prisoners,
escaped lunatics!
Does he want to rule
our country with these?
You are liars.
You hate the people.
- Well done, Marat.
- That's true.
You'll never stop talking of the people
as a rough and formless mass.
Why?
Because you live apart from them.
You let yourselves be dragged into the Revolution
knowing nothing about its principles.
Has not our respected Danton himself announced that instead
of banning riches, we should make poverty respectable?
And Robespierre who turns white
when the word force is used...
...doesn't he sit at high-class tables
making cultural conversation by candlelight?
- Down with Robespierre!
- Down with Danton!
Long live Marat!
And still you long to ape them...
...those betrayers of the Revolution,
those powdered chimpanzees.
I denounce them.
I denounce Necker...
...Lafayette, Talleyrand...
That's enough!
These are my friends
and friends of France.
If you use any more of these slanderous
passages we agreed to cut...
...I will stop your play.
...and all the rest of us.
What we need now is
a true deputy of the people...
...one who's incorruptible,
one we can trust.
Things are breaking down,
things are chaotic...
...but that is good,
that's the first step.
Now we must take the next step, and
choose a man who will rule all of you.
- Marat for dictator!
- Marat in his bathtub!
Send him down the sewers!
Dictator of the rats!
Dictator the word
must be abolished.
I hate anything to do
with masters and slaves.
I am talking about a leader
who in this...
He's trying to rouse them again
to new murders!
We do not murder...
...we kill in self-defence.
We are fighting for our lives.
Oh, if only we could have constructive
thought instead of agitation.
If only beauty and concord could once
more replace hysteria and fanaticism.
Look what's happening!
Join together!
Cast down your enemies,
disarm them!
For if they win, they will
spare not one of you...
...and all that you have
won so far will be lost.
Marat!
Marat! Marat! Marat!
A laurel wreath for Marat!
A victory parade for Marat!
Long live the streets!
Long live the lamp-posts!
Long live the bakers' shops!
Long live freedom!
Hit at the rich until they crash.
Throw down their god
and divide their cash.
We wouldn't mind a tasty meal
of pat de foie and filleted eel.
Marat! Marat! Marat!
Marat! Marat! Marat!
Poor Marat in your bathtub seat...
...your life on this planet
is near complete...
Closer and closer
to you death creeps...
...though there on her bench
Charlotte Corday sleeps...
Poor Marat, if she slept too late...
...while dreaming of fairy-tale
heads of state...
...maybe your sickness
would disappear...
Charlotte Corday
would not find you here...
Poor Marat,
stay wide awake...
...and be on your guard
for the people's sake...
Stare through the failing
evening light...
...for this is the evening
before the night...
What is that knocking, Simonne?
Simone!
Fetch Bas,
so I can dictate my call...
...my call to the people of France.
Why all these calls to the nation?
It's too late, Marat, forget
your call, it contains only lies.
What do you still
want from the revolution?
Where is it going?
Look at these lost revolutionaries.
Where will you lead them?
What will you order them to do?
Once you spoke of the authorities who
turned the law into instruments of oppression.
But how would you faire in the new
rearranged France you yearned for?
Do you want someone else to
tell you what you must write?
Tell you what work you must do?
And repeat to you the new laws over and
over until you can recite them in your sleep?
Why is everything so confused?
Everything I wrote or
spoke was considered...
...and true.
Each argument was sound.
And now...
...doubt?
Why does everything
sound false?
Poor old Marat,
you lie prostrate...
...while others are gambling
with France's fate...
Your words have turned into a flood...
...which covers all France
with her people's blood...
Poor old Marat...
...you lie prostrate...
...while others are gambling
with France's fate...
Poor old Marat...
Marat, you lie prostrate...
Marat, you lie prostrate...
Marat, you lie prostrate...
Corday...
...wake up.
Corday!
Corday.
Corday.
Corday, you have an appointment to keep,
and there is no more time for sleep.
Charlotte Corday,
awake and stand.
Take the dagger in your hand.
Come on, Charlotte,
do your deed...
...soon you'll get
all the sleep you need.
Now I know what it is like
when the head is cut off the body.
This moment...
...hands tied behind the back,
feet bound together...
...neck bared, hair cut off,
knees on the boards...
...head already laid
in the metal slot...
...looking down into
the dripping basket.
The sound of the blade rising and from
its slanting edge the blood still drops...
...and then the downward
slide to split us...
...in two!
They say that the head held high
in the executioner's hand...
...still lives...
...that the eyes still see...
...that the tongue still writhes...
...and that down below...
...the arms and legs...
...still...
...shudder.
Charlotte, awaken
from your nightmare.
Wake up, Charlotte,
and look at the trees...
...gaze at the rose-coloured evening sky
in which your lovely bosom heaves.
Forget your worries,
abandon each care...
...and breathe in the warmth
of the summertime air.
What are you hiding?
A dagger? Throw it away!
We should all carry
weapons in self-defence.
No one will attack you,
Charlotte.
Throw it away, go away,
go back to Caen.
In my room in Caen...
...on the table
under the open window...
...lies open the book of Judith.
Dressed in her legendary beauty...
...she entered the tent
of the enemy...
...and with a single blow,
slew him!
Charlotte,
what are you planning?
Look at this city.
Its prisons are crowded
with our friends.
I was with them just now
in my sleep.
They stand huddled together there and hear through
the windows the guards talking about executions.
They talk of people as gardeners
talk of leaves for burning.
Their names are crossed off
the top of a list...
...and as the list grows shorter,
more names are added to the bottom.
I stood with them, and we waited
for our own names to be called.
Let us leave together
this very evening.
What kind of town is this?
What sort of streets
are these?
Who invented this,
who profits by it?
I saw peddlers at every corner...
...they're selling little guillotines
with tiny sharp blades...
...and dolls filled with red liquid which spurts
from the neck when the sentence is carried out.
What kind of children are these...
...who can play with
this toy so efficiently?
And who is judging?
Who is judging?
What do you want at this door?
Do you know who lives here?
The man for whose sake
I have come here.
But what do you want from him?
Turn back, Charlotte.
I have a task which
I must carry out.
Go...
...leave me alone.
Now for the third time you observe
the girl whose job it is to serve...
...as Charlotte Corday stands once more
waiting outside Marat's door.
Duperret you see before her languish...
...prostrated by their parting's anguish.
Even his pain, his pleadings,
chaste but warm...
...cannot divert the act
she must perform.
For what has happened
cannot be undone...
...although that might
be wished by everyone.
We tried restraining her
with peaceful sleep...
...and with the claims of a passion
still more deep.
Simonne as well as best
she could she tried...
...but this girl here
would not be turned aside.
That man is now forgotten
and we can do nothing more...
...Corday is focussed on this man.
No.
I am right...
...and I will say it again.
Simonne, fetch Bas.
It is urgent...
...my call.
Marat...
...what are all your pamphlets
and speeches compared with her?
She stands here and will come to you
to kiss you and embrace you.
Marat...
...an untouched virgin stands before you
and offers herself to you.
See how she smiles,
how her teeth shine...
...how she shakes
her dark hair aside.
Marat, forget the rest...
...there's nothing else
beyond the body.
She stands here...
...her breasts naked
under the thin cloth...
...and perhaps she carries a knife
to intensify the love-play.
Who is at the door, Simone?
A maiden from the rural desert of a convent.
Imagine...
...those pure girls lying there
in rough shifts on hard floor...
...and the heated air from the fields forcing
its way to them through the barred windows.
Imagine...
...them lying there...
...with moist thighs and breasts...
...dreaming of those who
control life in the outside world.
And then she was tired of her isolation
and caught up in the new age...
...and gathered up in the great tide...
...and wished to be
part of the Revolution.
But what's the point of a revolution...
...without general copulation?
And what's the point
of a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
And what's the point
of a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
And what's the point
of a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
Marat...
...when I lay in the Bastille
for thirteen long years...
...I learned that
this is a world of bodies.
Each body pulsing with
a terrible power...
...each body alone and
racked with its own unrest.
In that loneliness
marooned in a stone sea...
...I heard lips whispering continually
and felt all the time...
...in the palms of my hands
and in my skin...
...the need of contact.
Shut behind thirteen bolted doors,
my feet fettered...
...I dreamed only
of the orifices of the body...
...put there, so one may hook
and twine oneself in them.
Continually I dreamed
of this confrontation...
...and it was a dream of the most savage,
jealous and cruellest imagining.
Marat...
...these cells of the inner self are worse
than the deepest stone dungeon...
...and as long as they are locked...
...all your revolution remains
only a prison mutiny...
...to be put down
by corrupted fellow-prisoners.
And what's the point of
a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
And what's the point of
a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
And what's the point of
a revolution without general...
...general copulation,
copulation, copulation...
...copulation, copulation,
copulation, copulation..?
Corday's third and last visit!
Have you given my letter to Marat?
Let me in, it is vital.
I must tell him
about the situation in Caen...
...where they are
gathering to destroy him.
Who is at the door, Simonne?
The girl from Caen.
Let her come in.
Marat?
I will tell you
the names of my heroes...
...but I am not betraying them...
...for I am speaking to a dead man.
Speak more clearly.
I can't understand you.
Come closer.
I name you...
...names...
...Marat...
...the names of those
who have gathered at Caen.
I name...
...Barbaroux and...
...Buzot and...
...Ption and Louvet and...
...Brissot and Vergniaud and...
...Gaudet and...
...Gensonn!
Who are you?
Come closer.
I am coming, Marat.
You cannot see me...
...because you are dead.
Bas! Take this down. Saturday, the thirteenth
of July, seventeen hundred and ninety three.
A call to the people of France.
Now it's a part of Sade's dramatic plan...
...to interrupt the action,
so this man...
...Marat can hear and
gasp with his last breath...
...at how the world
will go after his death.
With a musical history,
we'll bring him up to date...
...from seventeen-ninety-three
to eighteen-eight.
Now your enemies fall...
We're beheading them all...
Duperret and Corday
executed in the same old way...
Robespierre has to get on,
he gets rid of Danton...
That was spring, comes July,
and old Robespierre has to die...
Three rebellions a year,
but we're still of good cheer...
Malcontents, all have been,
taught their lesson by the guillotine...
There's a shortage of wheat...
We're too happy to eat...
Austria cracks and then
she surrenders to our men...
Fifteen glorious years...
Fifteen glorious years...
Years of peace, years of war,
each year greater than the year before...
Fifteen glorious,
glorious, glorious years...
Marat, we're marching on...
What brave soldiers we've got...
Now the traitors are shot...
Generals blodly take
power in Paris for the people's sake...
Egypt's beaten down flat...
Bonaparte did that...
Cheer him as they retreat,
even though we lose our fleet...
Bonaparte comes back,
gives our rulers the sack...
He's the man, brave and true...
Bonaparte would die for you...
Europe's free of her chains...
Only England remains...
But we want wars to cease,
so there's fourteen months of peace...
Fifteen glorious years...
Fifteen glorious years...
Years of peace, years of war,
each year greater than the year before...
Fifteen glorious,
glorious, glorious years...
Marat, we're marching on...
England must be insane,
wants to fight us again...
So we march off to war...
Bonaparte is our Emperor...
Nelson bothers our fleet,
but he's shot off his feet...
We're on top, yes, we are,
and we spit on Trafalgar...
Now the Prussians retreat...
Russia faces defeat...
All the world bends its knee
to Napoleon and his family...
Fight on land and on sea...
All men want to be free...
If they don't, never mind,
we'll abolish all mankind...
Fifteen glorious years...
Fifteen glorious years...
Years of peace, years of war,
each year greater than the year before...
Fifteen glorious,
glorious, glorious years...
Marat, we're marching on...
Behind Napoleon...
Marat, Marat, we're marching on
behind Napoleon...
Tell us, Monsieur de Sade,
for our instruction...
...just what you have achieved
with your production.
Who won?
Who lost?
We'd like to know the meaning
of your bathhouse show.
Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits
the great propositions and their opposites...
...see how they work...
...and let them fight it out.
The point?
Some light on our eternal doubt.
I've twisted and
turned on every way...
...and can find no ending
to our play.
Marat and I both
advocated force...
...but in debate,
each took a different course.
Both want the changes...
...but his views and mine on using
power never could combine.
On the one side, he thinks our lives
can be improved by axes and knives.
Or he would submerge
in the imagination...
...seeking a personal annihilation.
So for me, the last word
never can be spoken.
I'm left with a question
that is always open.
And if most have a little
and few have a lot...
You can see how much nearer
our goal we have got...
We can say what we like
without favour or fear...
And what we can't say
we can breathe in your ear...
And though we're locked up
we're no longer enslaved...
And the honour of France
is eternally saved...
The useless debate,
the political brawl...
...are over, there's one man
to speak for us all...
- For he helps us in sickness and destitution...
- No! Why are you afraid to tell them?
- He's the leader who ended the Revolution...
- Listen to me! Listen!
- And everyone knows why we're cheering for...
- Marat has died for you! They murdered him!
- Napolon, our mighty Emperor...
- And now they will murder you!
When will you learn to take sides?
- When will you learn to stand up? Listen! Listen to me!
- Led by him, our soldiers go...
- ...over deserts and through the snow...
- When will you learn to stand up?
A victory here
and a victory there...
Invincible, glorious,
always victorious...
For the good of all people
everywhere...
Charenton..! Charenton..!
Napolon..! Napolon..!
Charenton..! Charenton..!
Napolon..! Napolon..!
Nation..! Nation..!
Copulation..! Copulation..!
Let me go!
Let me go!