La Commune
(Paris 1871)
by Peter
Watkins
First Run / Icarus Films, Brooklyn NY,
2000
VHS video, 345 minutes, b/w
Sale, $490; Rent, $150
Distributor Website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, USA
ballast@netins.net
To understand this film, it helps to be
familiar with certain political events
in France in the second half of the 19th
century, at the end of the Franco-Prussian
War (1870-71). As explained on-screen,
the French suffered a humiliating defeat
in that conflict, resulting in a treaty
that (among other things) permitted the
occupation of France by German troops.
A large contingent of Paris citizens objected
to parts of the agreement; and, because
they had access to National Guard weapons,
French leaders feared these citizens might
attack the occupying Germans and, thereby,
undermine the truce. When the French Army
entered Paris in mid-March 1871 to take
control of the city's weapons, these citizens
confronted them, and the government forces
retreated. Regrouping in Versailles, the
French government declared war on the
Paris dissenters, who were collectively
known as the "Paris Commune of 1871" or
"Communards." The awful events that transpired
over the next two months, from March (when
the dissenters elected a council) through
May (when they were brutally put down),
are presented in extended detail (mostly
through reenactment by 200 current Paris
citizens) in a complex and highly unusual
film that lasts almost five hours. The
technique used throughout is that of the
docudrama, in which imagined dialogue,
emotional tone, and other aspects of the
past are dramatically recreated in the
present. In addition, this film makes
audacious use of an odd time warp, in
the sense that characters, costumes, and
other facets of the 19th century
are deliberately mixed in with those of
the present day. As a result, while the
Paris Commune is the film's explicit subject,
it is reported on camera by actors representing
present-day television interviewers and
commentators, but dressed in 19th
century clothes. As the film progresses,
it becomes increasingly clear that it
is not merely a docudrama but also an
editorial cry for today's Western governments
to address the needs of their citizens
by comparing current social concerns with
those that provided the impetus for the
Paris Commune (e.g., democratic representation,
equal rights, economic equity, capitalism
versus socialism, the separation of church
and state). When the Versailles Army stormed
Paris in 1871, more than 30,000 citizens
(men, women and children) were killed,
without trial, and often by impromptu
firing squads. Thirty thousand more were
arrested, many of whom were executed,
while others were sent into exile (among
them the painter Gustave Courbet). The
horrific slaughter that ended the Paris
Commune took place more that 130 years
ago, and yet it is hard to imagine that
the French working classes will ever forget
it–just as, in our own time, the
people of Beijing will probably also never
forget what took place at Tiananmen Square
on June 3, 1989.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Vol. 20, No. 1,
Autumn 2004).
