Happy Bastille Day!
![Image](http://pic70.picturetrail.com/VOL1828/11226851/19899693/325511614.jpg)
Though I'd liked to have seen
actual French movies on TCM today, I guess the guys at TCM knew that subtitles during the day might be a kiss of death for their viewership today, so instead we get two versions of
A Tale of Two Cities (sorry, Dirk Bogarde, but Mr. Colman
is Sidney Carton),
Scaramouche (1951) and, of course, Mrs. Thalberg's
Marie Antoinette (1938)...aargh!!
I really wouldn't have minded dubbed French movies, guys. Not the ones that many Americans might find heavy sledding, but how about René Clair’s
Le Million, Cocteau's
La Belle et la Bête, or the broadcast premiere of Melville's
L'Armée des Ombres? Yeah, I know: get real, Moira.
But out of the bunch that
are actually scheduled, I would probably single out
The Black Book (on TCM today at 1:45pm EDT) too, guys.
Reign of Terror aka
The Black Book (1949) was reportedly one of those productions that was originally planned as an A production with
Joan Crawford, Alida Valli &
Victor Mature as possible leads and wound up with
Arlene Dahl, Robert Cummings and
Richard Basehart. The great noir cinematographer
John Alton probably made this film so murky in part to reflect the confused loyalties/values of this period of The French Revolution, but also to save a few sous for
Walter Wanger's production.
Director
Anthony Mann always excelled showing the rampant paranoia in the world that his characters inhabit, and was particularly effective showing the delusions of wrong-headed patriarchs.
The outstanding performance here is that of
Richard Basehart as Robespierre, as a would-be father of revolutionary terror, and his truly grisly end, from what I've read of French history, is, for once, fairly accurately presented.
Basehart is interesting because he makes his revolutionary firebrand so cold, you actually expect his breath to appear when he speaks. He never pulls any punches creating a portrait of this leader as someone who, until the moment of his death, seemed to believe he was right.
Of course, people who are certain of what they do, and who seem to be unable to experience a moment of self-doubt, as history has repeatedly shown, are among the most destructive. As ol' Will once said "The evil that men do live after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."
I'll try to catch this one, though it isn't the kind of movie to watch on a bright summer day, is it?