La Marseillaise

From 1789 to 1792. The film tells the French Revolution neither from the assembly nor from the palace but from the volunteers of Marseille: a customs clerk, a mason, a peasant. One day they decide to march to Paris, and on the way they learn a song. At the same time, in the palace, Louis XVI is totting up the previous day's hunting; the king is shown not as a wicked man but as one who does not understand what is happening. By the time the Marseillais reach the Tuileries, the song has its name. Jean Renoir directs; two hours and eleven minutes, with the director's brother Pierre Renoir as Louis XVI. It was made under the Popular Front and financed in part by a public subscription run by the CGT: people took part by paying two francs, the price of a ticket.