French Revolution for dummies : part 2.

« Les années lumière » -the light years-, part 1 of the film, were trusted to French director Robert Enrico ; US TV veteran Richard T. Heffron was left to struggle with part 2 : « Les années terribles » -the terror years-.

While the Gargantuan defile staged by Jean-Paul Goude on Champs Elysées as the highlight of the 200th anniversary celebrations mixed weirdness, snobbery, superficiality and real creativity and somehow gelled into popular entertainment, « La Révolution Française » hardly revolutionised film aesthetics.

The two helmers deserve jury clemency : baking their oversized « europudding » was no piece of cake ; nothing in their track record suggested they would do it in style.

Their generally uninspired work was also faithful to French Revolution Art : the age was neo-classical, a return to ancient taste, in David’s stern style.

Last but not least, they could blame the script on the British.

David Ambrose’s best was not enough : his was a hopeless task.

He had to cater to the needs of both a French audience which, year after year, had been force-fed its Revolution at school -but might not have digested it- and foreign crowds which would spend the whole film waiting in vain for Napoléon.

Watching the film is like browsing through a check list : Bastille Day, Louis XVI’s failed escape to Varenne, his trial, Valmy... ; no part is missing, but the film exhibits substantial general design and/or assembly line problems : it is an Ikea bookcase of a movie, what you get bears little resemblance to your expectations, its rendition on the user’s instructions sheet or in the picture trailer.

In its better moments, the film rises to photo album charm : « images d’Epinal » -named after the Eastern France town where they were manufactured-, old-fashioned French History book clichés.

While the French would fast forward -they know most about them-, foreign crowds would slow down to read the captions and get a clue of what’s going on.

The film offers too little of too much : over-ambitious and underachieving. Its didactic value is close to nil, its entertainment assets barely worth more : it is neither a behind-the-scene drama, « Le Souper » style, nor a gun-and-powder epic of Abel Gance’s « Napoléon » disproportion.

Film was shot in English and French ; if each actor had spoken their original language, the movie would be more eloquent.

The Babel-like result would vividly convey the anarchic excitement of those troubled times, the flurry of contradictory views, the successive languages of the Revolution, its sheer noise, the progressive fall from articulate speech to vociferation : from « les années lumière » to « les années terreur ».

From its conception -a pity there is no project « making-of »- to how it plays on screen, the film may be an allegory : a metaphor for United Nations impotence, a well-meaning effort doomed to failure like so many UN missions.

« La Révolution Française » was a project so complex to manage, involving so many nationalities, struggling to conciliate so many diverging objectives that its participants had no time to try and make a more than acceptable movie.

Manned with troops from so many countries, UN peacekeeping missions face awesome inner challenges and conflicts before they can hope to export peace beyond their own ranks.

What if, in the name of « ingérence humanitaire » -humanitarian interference-, 18th century UN had meddled to put an end to French Reveolution « terror years ».

In fact, this is nearly what happened : Europe’s more powerful monarchs, rightly concerned by the fate of their Louis XVI « cousin » and his family, declared war on France ; their armies were crushed at Valmy.

They were back in 1815 : « Congrès de Vienne » had tried to return Europe to a semblance of order and Waterloo put a true end to a quarter century of French follies, but this is another story and a better film : « Le souper».