Slideshow
DANTON
France/Poland, 1983
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Written by Jean-Claude Carrière, Wajda, Agnieszka Holland
Starring Gérard Depardieu, Wojciech Pszoniak, Anne Alvaro
Approx. 136 mins.
Based on The Danton Affair, a 1930s play that Wajda directed on stage in 1975, this boisterous and lavish French production starring Gerard Depardieu and scripted by Jean-Claude Carriere, may have seemed like a break from contemporary Polish politics. But Depardieu’s Danton, an earthy, plain-spoken man of the people, was widely seen as a representation of Polish solidarity leader Lech Walesa, and Wojciech Pszoniak’s reserved, cerebral Robespierre, was seen as the iron-fisted military general and Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski. The film’s politics have been widely debated, but the movie, a rare Wajda production made outside of his own country, was a hit of the 1983 New York Film Festival and an arthouse success.
Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film and The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film
Reviews
“Brilliantly illuminates one of the most fascinating periods of the French Revolution”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times