Marat/Sade

1967

Action / Drama / History / Music

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 80% · 15 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 80% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.5/10 10 2841 2.8K

Plot summary

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on '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', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

Director

Peter Brook Photo
Peter Brook

Top cast

Glenda Jackson Photo
Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday
John Steiner Photo
John Steiner as Monsieur Dupere
William Morgan Sheppard Photo
William Morgan Sheppard as A Mad Animal
Michael Williams Photo
Michael Williams as Herald
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1.07 GB
1280*700
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr  
23.976 fps
1 hr 59 min
Seeds ...
1.99 GB
1904*1040
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr  
23.976 fps
1 hr 59 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by preppy-3 7 / 10

I haven't the slightest idea of what this is about but it works!

This takes place in 1808 in an insane asylum. The Marquis de Sade (Patrick Magee) puts on a play of an assassination for an audience. He uses the other inmates as actors. Things slowly get out of hand leading to a truly horrifying ending.I first caught this way back in 1980 at a center for adult education. It was a video of the movie shown for free. The picture was murky and the sound was terrible. Still I sat through it. I just caught it again (over 20 years later) on cable. This time I could see and hear it clearly. I'm not going to pretend that I understand what this is about, aside from the basic premise about a bunch of inmates putting on a play, and I do know it was based on a stage play. Still, I watched all 2 hours. 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. The direction also is masterful--it opens up the play cinematically. It has an R rating but that's mostly for subject matter and a brief nude scene with Richardson. This isn't for everybody--some people will be bored silly by it--but for those who like challenging movies this fits the bill. The ending is very disturbing. I give it a 7.
Reviewed by macpherr 6 / 10

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 theory behind this approach is that the patient by acting can understand his or her psychiatric disorder and through acting out their traumas they are supposed to get cured. It a method still used today by psychiatrists. 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 wants to kill Marat because of something that happened to her mother. Marat was one the leaders of the French Revolution and contacted a skin disease while hiding in the sewers of Paris. He had to remain in the bath tub to keep his skin moist and had a nurse to care for him. Marat controlled the revolution by writing orders in his bathtub and then sending them out. 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. The asylum warden, his wife, and his daughter are inside the bathroom cell with the inmates. The warden is constantly trying to maintain order and objecting to what the Marquis de Sade has put in the play. The inmates also interact with the warden's wife and daughter in many funny ways. There is one scene where the inmates pretend to be using a guillotine to cut off heads. When they cut commoners heads off they pour something red in a bucket, but when they cut the king's head off they pour blue blood in the bucket. Three of my favorite characters in the movie are a trio of people (two men, Kokol and Cucurucu, and a woman) in clown makeup who act as narrators and comic relief.This movie is rated R, but there is nothing really in the movie that justifies the rating. The only "sexy" scene is when Corday whips the Marquis de Sade with her hair. One other character is a sex maniac who can't keep his hands off Corday.This is a very interesting movie, but is hard to follow. I have the tape and a copy of the screenplay but I am under the impression that historians who specialize in the French Revolution should have a better understanding of this ultra intellectual plot. It is a screenplay that is very hard to understand. Perhaps because those people are crazy and are showing their perception of a reality that in my view would be different in the eyes of an average person. 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. A quote: "There is no revolution without general copulation, copulation, copulation."
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