The Night of Varennes (1982)

History is not everybody's cup of tea as most people consider it as a boring subject wherein one is forced to remember various dates and exploits of political parties and royal families. However,there are ways to make history appear more approachable. Italian director Ettore Scola has been able to get a lot of success in this domain by directing 'La Nuit De Varennes' which is not only historical but also an important road movie.It can easily be christened 'a historical road movie'. By blending facts and fiction director Ettore Scola has created a powerful film about the significance of the French revolution with a major focus on the escape of French royal family from Paris until Varennes.There are no dull moments in this film which clocks roughly 150 minutes as the presence of legendary figures Casanova and Restif De La Bretonne in a stagecoach is enough to kindle audiences' interest.The audiences learn that till the last minute there was immense amount of sympathy for the monarchy. Scola shows that there were people who would support the king at all times.The film is not a real history lesson but loses no time in establishing that French king's supporters had failed to realize that the king had completely lost poor people's sympathies.

I have just seen Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and it was such fairy floss that it made me want to see La Nuit de Varennes again. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available on DVD, only VHS and Amazon UK are out of stock.Anyone know when if and when it might be available on DVD? Re: my comment about Marie Antoinette: it's a well made film with a look inside Versailles and apparently the depiction of the protocol is spot on but there's no context. This wasn't meant to be a review of Marie Antoinette but apparently I have to write 10 lines or my comment won't be accepted.

Brilliantly conceived by longtime collaborators of Vittorio de Sica, cast with leading players for Marcel Carne, Federico Fellini and Martin Scorsese, this literally glowing film is a "restive" update of the era of Beaumarchais and the setting of his "Figaro," which directly inspired Renoir in Rules of the Game. Barrault and Mastroianni, with Keitel, discuss not only the events they observe (as has been mentioned) they discuss the unsettled and unsettling progress of liberty and liberation as figures of enormous note, themselves, to liberation literature and ancien regime manners, projecting sensibilities as actors we had admired in them for as much as 40 years. An authority of temperament in these players to portray their characters, including also Hanna Schygulla and those in superbly characterised parts like Pierre Malet's student, is so redundantly embedded in the scenario and production, under Scola's direction, that it is not only tempting but necessary to welcome this film as the descendant also of Les Enfants du Paradis. Imagine a coachful of radicals and fugitive aristocrats, almost as endangered (and sometimes, reciprocating) as Ford's odd lot in "Stagecoach," in an accidental salon furnishing a literal tour d'horison, externally, of the upheavals of revolution they discuss with the animation of their own convictions and reservations, within. From the moment the coach all but collides with Casanova's in an opening scene, this film concentrates in the mind two apprehensions of finality on parallel tracks, while two naive regimes careen together into history in the same reel -- the "age of conversation" of the Enlightenment in France, and the age of humanism in western European cinema. As a testamentary work it should be viewed with "Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir" and "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams," yet without the concordance of footnotes which younger viewers might need for these films. "La Nuit" wears its authority visibly and openly collegially, but very much to the same radiant effect.

Few people have probably heard of this French film. Yet, it is a masterpiece. Some great actors brought this story of classical art cinema alive. The historical moment depicted is the period just after the French Revolution. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are making a final attempt to escape - they flee from Paris. Historical characters (Casanova, Restif de la Bretonne) and imagined characters are all joined by a trip in a stagecoach. This is an opportunity for us to discover different mentalities of the 18th century. Each character sees the French Revolution differently, but the viewer can sense its uselessness, the suffering it brought by tearing a whole world apart.