"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." "Subtitles by BANQUO" "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 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." "Condé and Valenciennes have fallen to the Russians." " The Austrians!" " The Austrians!" "The Vendée 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 Napoléon 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 emigrés and when the emigrés 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 cafés." "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 paté 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 Pétion and Louvet and Brissot and Vergniaud and Gaudet and Gensonné!" "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!" " Napoléon, 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..!" "Napoléon..!" "Napoléon..!" "Charenton..!" "Charenton..!" "Napoléon..!" "Napoléon..!" "Nation..!" "Nation..!" "Copulation..!" "Copulation..!" "Let me go!" "Subtitles by BANQUO" "Let me go!"