Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution

Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution is a 2009 documentary broadcast on BBC Two in July 2009.

In 1794, French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre produced the world's first defense of "state terror" - claiming that the road to virtue lay through political violence. This film combines drama, archive and documentary interviews to examine Robespierre's year in charge of the Committee of Public Safety - the powerful state machine at the heart of Revolutionary France. Contesting Robespierre's legacy is Slavoj Žižek, who argues that terror in the cause of virtue is justifiable, and Simon Schama, who believes the road from Robespierre ran straight to the gulag and the 20th-century concentration camp. The drama, based on original sources, follows the life-and-death politics of the Committee during "Year Two" of the new Republic. It was a year which gave birth to key features of the modern age: the thought crime; the belief that calculated acts of violence can perfect humanity; the notion that the interests of "mankind" can be placed above those of "man"; the use of policemen to enforce morals; and the use of denunciation as a political tool.

The Village - BBC One (VIDEO/TRAILER Bellow)

The Village is a BBC TV series written by Peter Moffat. The drama is set in a Derbyshire village in the 20th century. The first series of what Moffat hopes will become a 42-hour TV drama was broadcast in spring 2013 and covered the years 1914 to 1920. A second season began broadcasting on August 10, 2014, and will continue the story into the 1920s. Future series will be set during the Second World War, post-war Austerity Britain, and later.

The Village tells the story of life in a Derbyshire village through the eyes of a central character, Bert Middleton. Bert has been portrayed as a boy by Bill Jones, as a teen by Alfie Stewart, as a young man by Tom Varey, and as an old man by David Ryall. John Simm plays Bert's father John Middleton, an alcoholic Peak District farmer, and Maxine Peake plays Bert's mother, Grace. Peake is a preferred actress of the writer, who has called her "the best actress of her generation", and she has featured in two previous Moffat series, Criminal Justice and Silk.

Writer Peter Moffat has spoken of wanting to create 'a British Heimat', alluding to Edgar Reitz's epic German saga Heimat, which followed one extended family in a region of Rhineland from 1919 to 1982. Unlike Downton Abbey, this version of history is a working-class history—"domestics are expected to face the walls when the master walks by"

The first series was filmed in and around Hayfield, Edale, Glossop, Chapel-en-le-Frith and Charlesworth in the Peak District, and in the grounds of Tatton Park in Cheshire, during October to December 2012. The four first episodes were directed by Antonia Bird, her last work before her death the same year.

John Simm used local historian Margaret Wombwell's book Milk, Muck and Memories in his research for how the farmers from the period lived, and Moffat researched locally and at the Imperial War Museum.

On 28 April 2013 the BBC Media Centre reported that "BBC One's critically acclaimed epic Sunday night drama series starring Maxine Peake and John Simm will return with six more episodes next year." The second series began filming at the end of March 2014 in Derbyshire. The stately home and grounds at Lyme Park were used as a new filming location. It was confirmed by cast members on Twitter that filming for the second series had wrapped on 4 July 2014.

We long for a sense of belonging that village life offers

Britain's continuing fascination with a life connected to the land finds new expression in Peter Moffat's historical drama series

Rachel Cooke

The Observer, Sunday 31 March 2013 / http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/31/why-brits-love-villages

For all that it longs to act as a bracing corrective to ITV's ludicrous Downton Abbey, the BBC's hyped new drama The Village isn't without its share of historical falsehoods. Its characters – we're in 1914 as it begins – talk of women's suffrage and the coming war in a way that you feel real people probably never did (a kind of polarised ping pong over the dinner table), and it seems unlikely that an upper-class young woman would ever have had spur-of-the-moment sex in the bracken with the servant whose job it was to draw her bath.

Nevertheless, as you will find should you watch the first part tonight, it's impossible not to admire the ambition of this show. Peter Moffat, its writer, wants nothing less than to tell the story of the 20th century through the lives of the inhabitants of one tiny Peak District village; the plan is that, future commissioning editors allowing, The Village will eventually comprise some 42 hours of television.

He has, he says, written an "ordinary epic", a narrative that is determined to be interested in life as it is lived. Given the way that television works these days, this is brave-bordering-on-foolhardy. Hillside intercourse apart, such quotidian rhythms are going to require more than a little patience on the part of the audience.

Moffat's bosses at the BBC, of course, will be betting on viewers swooning contentedly at the sight of clouds scudding over Edale and Hayfield, the Derbyshire villages where it is filmed, even if they aren't absolutely gripped by its plot. And not without reason. Our love of the idea of the village, if not the reality, shows no sign of letting up. We cleave to it through thick and thin, for all that most of us live in cities and suburbs; for all that so many villages now have only half-lives, thanks to second-home owners and post office closures.

Last week, much of the news was frantically metropolitan: Boris Johnson in Islington, David Miliband in Primrose Hill, Pippa Middleton and her sushi notionally at the offices of Waitrose Kitchen magazine in Ladbroke Grove. All the same, we also learned both the best place (supposedly) for rural living in England (the villages of the borough of Waverley in Surrey, according to the Halifax), and that the long-standing editor of The Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, has decided to move on – and I bet you a million pounds that it was these stories that were the more resonant for most people. Boris Johnson is endlessly entertaining but he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a balm for the soul.

Novelists and dramatists tend to talk of villages as microcosms; the universal emotions are all there, but helpfully boundaried and with some pretty scenery to boot. Property writers, on the other hand, purr seductively over quality of life: villages are safe, and near good schools, and the air is clean.

Of course I understand both of these arguments. I like Barbara Pym and the thought of being able to leave my back door open as much as the next woman. But neither one of them truly explains the enduring fascination of villages for the kind of people who would feel buried alive if they actually had to live in one. I'm the sort of a person, literally and metaphorically, who needs to know that I can buy a paper and a pint of milk at any time of day or night. So why is it that when I'm anxious about work and life, I lie on my bed and picture myself walking across the green of a small village in County Durham? What is it that my heart is seeking as I turn myself into a human version of Google Earth?

My own hunch is that this longing is to do with sense of place, a connectedness that is increasingly elusive in our cities, which all look alike, and whose inhabitants come from everywhere and nowhere.

Peter Moffat has strained his every sinew not to gild his fictional village with what he has called a "Ready Brek glow": crops fail, families go hungry, and a scrap of tripe in milk is thought a feast fit for a king. It's no bucolic idyll. But even so, the romantic in him won't, or can't, dispense with the idea of the bond between his characters and their land.

In the first episode, John Middleton (John Simm), a struggling farmer, forces his small son Joe – a boy unwilling to work in the fields – to stare at the flag floor of the family kitchen and consider its ancient dips. By the door and the hearth, it curves steeply, worn down by the feet of many generations. Beneath the dining table, however, there is no slope, for this piece of furniture is never moved, and meals are eaten quickly, being only fuel. I didn't believe John's speech as a piece of realism but I felt its power as poetry.

We city dwellers, for all that we might cherish the sound of police sirens and hard-braking buses, are just so much flotsam and jetsam. London, the city where I have lived for 20 years, has swallowed me up. But being invisible isn't the same as belonging.

Do politicians watch any television apart from the odd box set of The West Wing and Borgen? My strong guess, having interviewed dozens of the breed, is that they don't. But we must hope that a few do at least try The Village, a series that is political in the very broadest sense of the word. Our politicians need to get back in touch with the emotional ties between town and country as a matter of some urgency.

For far too long, they have divided people into "urban" and "rural" and, having counted the relevant heads, made policy decisions based on the conviction that city types, who comprise the bigger, louder group, simply don't care what happens in the countryside (we see this most recently in this government's disastrously haphazard and wilfully ignorant new planning regime, which favours greenfield development over brownfield).

This is madness, and it will bite them on the bum in the end. And just to flip the argument over: understanding why people in Birmingham and Newcastle and Sheffield never miss The Archers, and spend a few minutes of every working day staring dreamily at village houses on the Rightmove website, should be the bottom line for those of our politicians who hope to make Britain's cities less dysfunctional (assuming such creatures do exist). For it's only by discovering what it is that so many of us are missing that we will have any hope at all of making our home towns better places – happier places – to live.

The Village: the most accomplished new drama of the year so far

Ben Lawrence is very impressed by the first episode of The Village, BBC One's epic new period drama.

By Ben Lawrence10:05PM BST 31 Mar 2013 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/9961922/The-Village-the-most-accomplished-new-drama-of-the-year-so-far.html

In television drama, rural poverty doesn’t exist. Grim urban reality is one thing, but when it comes to the countryside, there is a need for reassurance, cosiness and, that dreaded word, heritage.

At first, it seemed that The Village (BBC One) would be a paean to our rural past. As present day centenarian Bert (played by David Ryall) reflected on his childhood and the day in 1914 when the first bus came to his small Derbyshire community, it felt certain that the next hour would play out like an extended Hovis advertisement. However, things soon became strange, poetic, ugly and dark in the most accomplished new drama of the year so far.

The lens in Peter Moffat’s six-part series is young Bert (an astonishingly assured performance from 12-year-old Bill Jones) and in the first episode, we saw him navigate a pretty wretched existence: frequently beaten at school for writing with his left hand, tormented at home by his angry, embittered father (John Simm) whose crop failure on their small farm was a metaphor for his failure as a human being. Small comforts for the boy came from his kind, quiet mother (Maxine Peake), determined that her children escape to a better life and from his adored older brother Joe (Nico Mirallegro) who went to work at the “big house” and, by the end of the episode, was marching to war, and possibly to a premature, heroic death.

When The Village slipped occasionally into period cliché (the solitary drinking of John, a dinner-party conversation about suffragism in which each person was strategically placed to offer a different point of view), it was saved by imaginative dialogue, and odd, unexpected resolutions.

Real effort has been made to create an authentic community. We witnessed conversations about mortality in a women’s bathhouse. We saw muscular Christianity visited on the village children by a buttoned-up, sadistic teacher who had failed to get enlisted on account of his low height. Most importantly, The Village refused to foist contemporary relevance on its audience. This was drama as history where the past is definitely another country.

On the strength of the first episode, The Village marks a much-needed return to intelligent populism for BBC One drama. And Moffat, who has already shown considerable talent with Criminal Justice, has just proven that he is one of the most imaginative and important writers working in television today.

Les Délices de L’Ancien Régime /Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais - Paris (France) (VIDEO Bellow)

HOTEL CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS

Paris-Marais

12, rue Vieille-du-Temple 75004 Paris

Tel : +33 (0)1 42 72 34 12 - E-mail : hotel@carondebeaumarchais.com

“The MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, Beaumarchais's most famous play, inspired the hotel’s entire decor. Charm, gaiety, joie de vivre, elegance, refinement and a spirit of freedom, all the elements making up the originality of French culture were born under Beaumarchais.”

http://www.carondebeaumarchais.com/english/index.html

 “The famous, boisterous, 18th-century playwright Beaumarchais lived close by, just up the street, at 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple.” 

Beaumarchais was born Pierre-Augustin Caron in the Rue Saint-Denis, Paris on 24 January 1732.

 He was the only boy among the six surviving children of André-Charles Caron, a watchmaker from Meaux. The family had previously been Huguenots, but had converted to Roman Catholicism in the wake of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the increased persecution of Protestants that followed. The family was comfortably middle-class and Beaumarchais had a peaceful and happy childhood. As the only son, he was spoiled by his parents and sisters. He took an interest in music and played several instruments. Though born a Catholic, Beaumarchais retained a sympathy for Protestants and would campaign throughout his life for their civil rights.

From the age of ten, Beaumarchais had some schooling at a "country school" where he learned some Latin. Two years later, Beaumarchais left school at twelve to work as an apprentice under his father and learn the art of watchmaking. He may have used his own experiences during these years as the inspiration for the character of Cherubino when he wrote the Marriage of Figaro. He generally neglected his work, and at one point was evicted by his father, only to be later allowed back after apologising for his poor behaviour.

At the time, pocket watches were commonly unreliable for timekeeping and were worn more as fashion accessories. In response to this, Beaumarchais spent nearly a year researching improvements. In July 1753, at the age of twenty one, he invented an escapement for watches that allowed them to be made substantially more accurate and compact. One of his greatest feats was a watch mounted on a ring, made for Madame de Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV. The invention was later recognised by the Academy of Sciences, but only after a dispute with Lepaute, the royal watchmaker, who attempted to pass off the invention as his own. The affair first brought Beaumarchais to national attention and introduced him to the royal court at Versailles.

Beaumarchais' problems were eased when he was appointed to teach Louis XV's four daughters the harp. His role soon grew and he became a musical advisor for the royal family.In 1759, Caron met Joseph Paris Duverney, an older and wealthy entrepreneur. Beaumarchais assisted him in gaining the King's approval for the new military academy he was building, the École Royale Militaire, and in turn Duverney promised to help make him rich. The two became very close friends and collaborated on many business ventures. Assisted by Duverney, Beaumarchais acquired the title of Secretary-Councillor to the King in 1760–61, thereby gaining access to French nobility. This was followed by the purchase in 1763 of a second title, the office of Lieutenant General of Hunting, a position which oversaw the royal parks. Around this time, he became engaged to Pauline Le Breton, who came from a plantation-owning family from Saint-Domingue, but broke it off when he discovered she was not as wealthy as he had been led to believe.

His name as a writer was established with his first dramatic play, Eugénie, which premiered at the Comédie Française in 1767. This was followed in 1770 by another drama, Les Deux amis.

Beaumarchais's Figaro plays are Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable. Figaro and Count Almaviva, the two characters Beaumarchais most likely conceived in his travels in Spain, were (with Rosine, later the Countess Almaviva) the only ones present in all three plays. They are indicative of the change in social attitudes before, during, and after the French Revolution. Figaro and Almaviva first appeared in Le Sacristain, which he wrote around 1765 and dubbed "an interlude, imitating the Spanish style."To a lesser degree, the Figaro plays are semi-autobiographical. Don Guzman Brid'oison (Le Mariage) and Bégearss (La Mère) were caricatures of two of Beaumarchais's real-life adversaries, Goezman and Bergasse. The page Chérubin (Le Mariage) resembled the youthful Beaumarchais, who did contemplate suicide when his love was to marry another. Suzanne, the heroine of Le Mariage and La Mère, was modelled after Beaumarchais's third wife, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz. Meanwhile, some of the Count monologues reflect on the playwright's remorse over his numerous sexual exploits.

Before France officially entered the war in 1778, Beaumarchais played a major role in delivering French munitions, money and supplies to the American army.

To restore his civil rights, Beaumarchais pledged his services to Louis XV. He traveled to London, Amsterdam and Vienna on various secret missions. His first mission was to travel to London to destroy a pamphlet, Les mémoires secrets d'une femme publique, which Louis XV considered a libel of one of his mistresses, Madame du Barry. Beaumarchais was sent to London to persuade the French spy Chevalier D'Eon to return home, but while there he began gathering information on British politics and society. Britain's colonial situation was deteriorating and in 1775 fighting broke out between British troops and American rebels. Beaumarchais became a major source of information about the rebellion for the French government and sent a regular stream of reports with exaggerated rumours of the size of the success of the rebel forces blockading Boston.

Once back in France, Beaumarchais began work on a new operation. Louis XVI, who did not want to break openly with Britain, allowed Beaumarchais to found a commercial enterprise, Roderigue Hortalez and Company, supported by the French and Spanish crowns, that supplied the American rebels with weapons, munitions, clothes and provisions, all of which would never be paid for. This policy came to fruition in 1777 when John Burgoyne's army capitulated at Saratoga to a rebel force largely clothed and armed by the supplies Beaumarchais had been sending; it marked a personal triumph for him. Beaumarchais was injured in a carriage accident while racing into Paris with news of Saratoga.

Beaumarchais had dealt with Silas Deane, an acting member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence in the Second Continental Congress. For these services, the French Parliament reinstated Beaumarchais's civil rights in 1776. In 1778, Beaumarchais' hopes were fulfilled when French government agreed the Treaty of Alliance and entered the American War of Independence followed by Spain in 1779 and the Dutch Republic in 1780.

Le Barbier premiered in 1775. Its sequel, Le Mariage, was initially passed by the censor in 1781, but was soon banned from being performed by Louis XVI after a private reading. Queen Marie-Antoinette lamented the ban, as did various influential members of her entourage. Nonetheless, the King was unhappy with the play's satire on the aristocracy and overruled the Queen's entreaties to allow its performance. Over the next three years, Beaumarchais gave many private readings of the play, as well as making revisions to try to pass the censor. The King finally relented and lifted the ban in 1784. The play premiered that year and was enormously popular even with aristocratic audiences. Mozart's opera premiered just two years later. Beaumarchais's final play, La Mère, premiered in 1792 in Paris.

In homage to the great French playwright Molière, Beaumarchais also dubbed La Mère "The Other Tartuffe". All three Figaro plays enjoyed great success, and are still frequently performed today in theatres and opera houses.

It was not long before Beaumarchais crossed paths again with the French legal system. In 1787, he became acquainted with Mme. Korman, who was implicated and imprisoned in an adultery suit, which was filed by her husband to expropriate her dowry. The matter went to court, with Beaumarchais siding with Mme. Korman, and M. Korman assisted by a celebrity lawyer, Nicolas Bergasse. On 2 April 1790, M. Korman and Bergasse were found guilty of calumny (slander), but Beaumarchais's reputation was also tarnished.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution broke out. Beaumarchais was no longer the idol he had been a few years before. He was financially successful, mainly from supplying drinking water to Paris, and had acquired ranks in the French nobility. In 1791, he took up a lavish residence across from where the Bastille once stood. He spent under a week in prison during August 1792, and was released only three days before a massacre took place in the prison where he had been detained.

Nevertheless, he pledged his services to the new republic. He attempted to purchase 60,000 rifles for the French Revolutionary army from Holland, but was unable to complete the deal. While he was out of the country, Beaumarchais was declared an émigré (a loyalist of the old regime) by his enemies. He spent two and a half years in exile, mostly in Germany, before his name was removed from the list of proscribed émigrés. He returned to Paris in 1796, where he lived out the remainder of his life in relative peace. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

L'Hôtel Caron de Beaumarchais propose à ses hôtes une expérience tout à fait unique. Un séjour dans le Paris du Grand Siècle. Une évasion dans les coulisses du temps, sous le regard complice et séduisant de Madame de Pompadour et de son protégé, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.
C'est l'intuition géniale de Alain Bigeard, qui a conçu cet hôtel « bonbonnière » au début des années 1990, que de recréer l'ambiance d'une demeure de charme du 18e siècle. Le site -- un ancien hôtel du cœur de Paris -- se prêtait parfaitement à l'exercice, avec ses belles poutres d'époque et sa cave en pierres de taille. Chaque chambre y a été aménagée dans l'atmosphère du siècle de Louis XV et du style si délicat qui le caractérise, entre rose franc et bleu pastel.