The film Danton
by Andrej Wajda is based on a play ‘The Danton Affair’ which was written in
1935 by polish playwright Stanislawa Przybyszweka. The story is set against the
terror of the second year of the French republic in 1794 in which over 16,000
people died. It focuses on two of the main personalities of the era,
Robespierre the head of the committee of public safety and advocate of the use
of Mde Guillotine and Danton, moderate, idealist, adherent of the more liberal
ideals of revolutionary rhetoric. He and his supporters believed in decreasing
or cutting out the role that terror and the guillotine played in enforcing
revolutionary policy. The film is also played out against a backdrop of severe
political disturbance in Poland. The director Wadja actually was forced to stop
production in 1981 and retired to France to complete the film. This lends a
more 3 dimensional aspect to a film that might have otherwise seemed an
interesting character study of two of the most controversial figures of this
time.
The action in the film takes place only over a few
months. In this short time it aims to illustrate all the major factors that
affected the unstable machinations of a republican government that was still in
its infancy. The film opens with a
bleak portrait of Paris in the spring of 1794. People are queuing for limited
supplies of bread. Already in only the second year of the republic discontent
is in the air. Danton returns from the country back into the arms of his people.
His carriage is beset on all sides as the people in the streets greet his
arrival. This lively, hearty and much loved man is juxtaposed to the sickly
figure of Robespierre. At the beginning of the film when we first see
Robespierre he is in bed sick. This weakness is played on throughout the film.
Whereas the first time we see Danton it is amongst lots of people, the first
time we see Robespierre he is sick and alone. In the house of this staunch
advocator of the terror, the maidservant is indoctrinating her little brother
with the revolutionary creed, The declaration of the rights of man and the
citizen. These opening scenes sum up how the characters will be portrayed
throughout the rest of the film. The film draws upon the common conceptions of
both characters Danton as a ‘man of the people’ and Robespierre as the
cold-hearted instigator of the terror. Their physical differences are used as
visible manifestation of their ideological standing.
The film is set around events leading up to and
including the trial and execution of Danton and some of his supporters and
cohorts. The film is rich with symbolism and metaphor. It draws many parallels
to the contemporary communist state in Poland from which Wadja had fled. This
is made explicit in the opening minutes when the contents of Camille Desmoulins
pamphlet are being read aloud to Robespierre. It states that if Moscow had a
free press Russia would be free tomorrow.’ This tack of metaphor so explicit
from the beginning of the film is then pursued more subtlety as this story of
post revolutionary France unfolds. The story is also conveyed with a fair
degree of not little historical accuracy. The characters of Danton and
Robespierre are fully developed, they are not depicted as merely two
dimensional characters, which is so often the case in films of this nature,
particularly with an ulterior political motive. It is not the case that the
despotic tyrant Robespierre has the heroic man of the people Danton bloodily
executed under the guise of the good of the state. Both characters are seen to
be both good and bad, although ultimately Robespierre is far worse.
The main point of contention
is seen to be this; Danton wants an end to the terror and Robespierre advocates
its use as a necessary tool of the continuation of the new republic. Their
associates urge both parties into action, Robespierre by the Committee for
Public Safety and Danton by his friends who can see how the Committee’s opinion
is gathering against them. They are gradually becoming a greater target of
violence from the regime. This is exemplified in the destruction of Desmoulins
printing premises for his leaflet. Danton is the figurehead and leader of this
group and he is looked to instigate a move against the government, as it is he
who has the support of the people, rather than the committees who rule in their
name. This is technically correct although he knew he was back in the city for
this purpose having been compelled out of retirement in the countryside.
The Committee had been
waging a long campaign against all its opponents, including Dantonists and
Indulgents. What is not mentioned in this film is that the left wing opponents
were also being targeted at this time, for example those in the Cordeliers Club
or the Paris Commune were seen as a threat to stable government. Robespierre is quoted as saying that ‘we
must sail between the twin reefs of weakness and temerity….We have to avoid the
two abuses for by one the Republic
would be threatened with death from internal dislocation, and by the other
it would inevitably perish from failure to adopt energetic measures.’[1] Indeed energetic measures were taken. The
opportunity for the Committee arose around the subject the East India Company
affair. The links to Danton were at best dubious although there was little
doubt about the involvement of certain of his friends, and while in the film
this is depicted as little more than a trumped up charge the connection was
real. Yet Danton’s involvement only came in under the banner of aiding his
friend Phillipeaux. It was perhaps his arrogance, portrayed in the film in a
view that he is ‘untouchable’ by the Committee, that finally seals his fate.
This is also seen to be a contributory factor to his downfall by historians.
This ‘mistaken confidence in his invulnerability’[2]
both in the film and in his life did lead to his downfall. He realises only too
late that the ‘democracy’ of the terror would strike upon him.
Robespierre did indeed meet
with Danton and Desmoulins before their arrests to try and make them see the
Committee’s way of thinking, but this was not to be. It was through his
unwillingness to deny his friendship with Phillipeaux, because he still held
some belief that Phillipeaux would remain under his protection, that led to his
eventual trial. The records show that he was arrested for ‘nothing very much in
particular’[3], and as
Danton himself recognised the trial was only a formality. He knew his fate was
sealed, ‘Here is my head to answer for everything….Life is a burden to me, I am
impatient to be rid of it’.[4]
Danton and his friends were sentenced after a highly controversial trial, in
which there were indeed prevented from speaking and it was possible that there
were only seven jurors as shown in the film. The hood that had covered the
guillotine at the beginning of the film was now removed and its purpose was
clear, to kill Danton. All this under the pretext that the ‘fundamental
principle of democratic government….is the essential underpinning which
sustains it and makes it work’.[5]
The death of Danton was therefore essential because there could be no
compromise between the two; this would have created a rift that could have torn
the republic apart.
Perhaps the crucial
difference between Danton and Robespierre was that Danton was a theorist and idealist
and Robespierre had to put ideas into action he was a pragmatist. He had to
find a way to make things work. This way at least the republic continued on for
a while longer, although it claimed Robespierre too a few months later. This
perhaps can be gleaned at the end of the film when he draws his bed sheet over
his head like a death shroud. Perhaps his sickness throughout the film could be
seen as indicative of a system, or an ideology, that Wajda finds inherently
weak or sick.
There are many similarities to be drawn between this film and the totalitarian regime that was in power in Poland at the time the film was being made. The leading characters in the film are fine orators as can be exemplified in the dinner scene with Danton. Oratory Propaganda was something that was widely associated with totalitarian leaders of both left and right wing regimes. In the film when it becomes time to sign the warrant for Danton’s arrest, the people urge Robespierre on in the system rather than a real crime against democracy. The ‘committees’ themselves also echo the vanguard of the proletariat that is crucial in Hegelian and Marxist ideology. Yet in real life, what begins in the name of the people becomes their subjugation under an oligarchy or a singular despot. Wadja also includes the commonly used justification in the film of this type of rule. ‘The despot says let innocent people die rather than the culprit escape’[6] and agreeing with the Machiavellian principle that deeds done for the greater good, however normally horrible, are therefore lesser evils. Even by mentioning Machiavelli Wadja draws on contemporary connotations of him as a tyrannical ruler and therefore these justifications are negated. There is no justification for this either in 1794 or in 1982.
It is these and other subtleties that make Danton a very interesting and entertaining film. It is an attack on any inherently corrupt political system. Any system that uses ideology to subjugate the people it should be trying to free. By using these to very different political systems Wajda show that this corruption is liable through all ideologies and none should be complacent of their infallibility. The leader however good his intentions may or may not be he can easily become ‘the vile instrument of despotism’,[7] that he is trying to be rid of.
This film is educational and historically accurate especially considering its ulterior motives. It gets the feel of the desperation to keep order in post-revolutionary France when the ideological promise of the revolution seems to me failing, when all measures seem acceptable and necessary.
[1] Rude, George, Robespierre, William Collins and Sons, 1975,p174
[2] Hampson, Danton, Duckworth Press, 1978, p155
[3] ibid. p163
[4] Forrest, Alan. The French Revolution, Blackwell Press. 1995, p67
[5] Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Clarendon Press, 1989, p272
[6] Wadja, Danton, 1989