Marat\Sade

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...

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