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The portrayal of Jean-Paul rocks (spotted fur collar!) and (although not quite the right physical type) Max looks pretty good is lovely striped coat, wearing his specs, and (I think it's him) having his wig powdered.

I've written to The New European, which ran a touching article by a guy who'd followed up a school prize inscription in an old book of Burns' poetry, to identify the owner as a girl who was killed in a railcrash in the late 1940s. He imagined her spirit of social justice being sparked by his poem, The Rights of Woman - but the title is very ( Read more... )

I’ve noticed that generally, when Maximilien has been portrayed on stage and screen, he’s generally played at least a decade too old, and/or usually not nearly handsome enough - usually for ideological reasons. In a visual medium, it’s easier to make viewers dislike a character by making him/her look less attractive than in reality, and vice versa ( Read more... )

That this (Doctor Who: Reign of Terror):

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was made the same year (the year before I was born!) as this (La Terreur et la Vertu):

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Although in the 1970s, BBC2 showed a subtitled version of Les Rois Maudits, and we now have subtitled French crime and thriller serials on BBC4, we have never had any decent French historical material on the Revolution ( Read more... )

There's going to be a new French Rev film, Un Peuple et son Roi (due probably next year)! I'll be interested to see how it handles the characters, but it's refreshing to see they've been cast as (correctly) mostly young. Mind, I'm somewhat amused that even the King and Georges D. have been made considerably more attractive than in reality! In the ( Read more... )

I've ordered Jean-Clément Martin's Robespierre: la Fabrication d’un Monstre… The review looks very interesting (original French version here). It is fascinating that it has taken so long for so much of the myth-making to be dismantled. How long it takes for academic research to break down popular-level historical myths is another matter, especially ( Read more... )

From the excellent Bunniesandbeheadings on Tumblr: leading Revolutionaries as depicted in Gance's Napoléon. When Marat is the best-looking, FFS, you know something has gone horribly wrong casting-wise… I'm sure that's Jeremy Clarkson as Danton… But, damn it all, Max is meant to be the pretty one…!

I was pleased to see this in today's Grauniad online. It's very much taking the same line as Anne Scott McLeod's excellent article on historical fiction for the young. Nothing irritates me more than historical fiction making the characters modern people with modern values and mind-sets in fancy dress. I know it's been around since the birth of the ( Read more... )

Have been having an interesting if frustrating exchange on IMDb, re: Hobbit 3, with an acquaintance who takes the view that gratuitously changing characters and motivations is preferable to depicting characters grappling with Heroic-Age type honour codes because
you have really got to make allowances for the modern viewer who fails to understand so ( Read more... )

The Book of Negroes is being dramatised in Canada. Hope this comes out on DVD! Black Loyalist story!