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Lazare Carnot ou le glaive de la Révolution (1978),

A documentary film directed by Jean-François Delassus.

Last Monday with @mathildeaquisexta, I had the great opportunity to finally watch this movie, which was believed to be a lost media for a long time. Indeed, it is not: if you are in France and live close to an archive or library that provides access to INA's stored material, you can see it too on the spot.

The film structure is rather straightforward and nothing new when it comes to this kind of media: there's a narrator, Michel Debré in this case, who describes Carnot's political and military career from his election to the Committee of Public Safety until the coup of 18 Fructidor. His vicissitudes through the Consulate and the Empire are only quickly listed in a couple of minutes at the end - as they are not the focus of the movie - to leave eventually space for M. Debré to draw some conclusions on Carnot's deeds and views on how a democratic state should work.

Considering that it hasn't been uploaded anywhere online yet and that the series, which the movie is part of, Les samedis de l'histoire, was broadcast only once - it didn't have much success apparently - my friend and I didn't have very high expectations, but with our surprise, the film revealed itself to be rather decent and entertaining, with very few serious historical inaccuracies.

I'm no historian and even less a film critic, so, instead of attempting to make - and consequently fail since I'm not trained for such things - a real review, I'll simply write down my personal opinions and impressions, starting with what I didn't appreciate, to proceed with its strong points. At the end of this post, if Tumblr allows it, I uploads some pictures I took with my phone and some others I found online. They aren't of very high quality; nonetheless, I did my best to edit them so that they look decent. Unfortunately, in some instances, removing the glare and other unwanted effects was impossible with the means available. Better than nothing though, since INA hasn't agreed on giving copies of the movie upon request yet.

With that being said, let's begin!

The Bad (historical inaccuracies/bizarre filming choices/general things I didn't like)

The film opens with Barère updating his colleagues at the Committe of Public Safety on the disastrous situation France is in as far as the conflict against the First Coalition is concerned. Someone who's specialised in warfare is thus needed and Carnot's name gets mentioned. Robespierre shakes his head, asking Prieur de la Cote-d'Or why he can't do that instead, given his experience as officier du génie. Here comes the first inaccuracy: in real history, Prieur and Carnot joined the Committee together on the same day and, in particular, it was thanks to the former that Carnot was taken into consideration, because in the beginning Barère turned to Prieur only (I wrote a brief post about that here). So, it wouldn't make sense for the latter to already be a CSP member; not to mention the fact that he's played by an old, overweight, non-disabled actor, so somebody who couldn't be more different that the real Prieur. Usually I'm not picky when it comes to actors' physical appearance, but this one in particular left me quite perplexed, especially if one looks at the rest of the cast, which is on point for the most part, sole exception being Carnot's younger brother who in '93-'94 was 38-39 years old and in the film he looks like he's 20.

The final assault in the battle of Wattignies - that one with Carnot leading the troops - is extremely poorly made. I understand that the budget was low, but come on... A bunch of soldiers running chaotically, like high schoolers trying to get the bus to go home, isn't the most flattering way to depict one of the most beautiful battles of the Revolution - to quote Napoléon.

There's no mention of Carnot's involvement in the arrest and consequential execution of Robespierre and associates. The events of 8, 9 and 10 Thermidor just include a clip of Hoche being sad in prison, while the narrator limits himself to mention that Robespierre, Saint-Just etc have been proclaimed outlaws; after their death is announced, the spectator witnesses the release of the young general. All in all, such a missed opportunity to show all the possible reasons - and there are! - why Carnot turned against his former colleagues, something that could have enriched the depiction of his character even more.

The interactions between Carnot and Barras. There's quite a number of testimonies, stating that the two often fought and didn't like each other at all; yet in the movie, not only they walk arm in arm, but they converse in a very friendly way. This is kind of inaccurate; for example: the real Carnot would have never revealed the whole delicate matter concerning his former girlfriend to somebody like Barras, but here in the movie he does.

The good (what I appreciated and thought brilliant)

Apart from the two unfortunate cases presented above, I appreciated each of the casing choices, particularly the actors playing Carnot, Robespierre, Saint-Just and Hoche. Alain Mottet simply is Carnot. Not only his appearance matches fairly well that of the mathematician during the Revolution, but also his way of acting is rather accurate, considering all we know about him from historical accounts, which portrays him as a polite, good-mannered, hard-working person, who acts as a sort of patron for young promising military men. If my still limited knowledge on his life can serve anything, I'd say Mottet's performance comes the closest to the real Lazare Carnot. Something similar can be said for Robespierre and Saint-Just, played by actors who represent them well both in looks and attitude. They aren't depicted as bloodthirsty dictators, not even as Carnot's sworn enemies, but as people of great talent and intellect with whom the former can interact without much issue. As for Hoche... You're going to understand very soon what I liked about his actor.

I found the choice of adding Feulint - Carnot's younger brother - showing his influence and support in the life of Lazare's life brilliant. He gets often - almost all the time, to be fair - forgotten or treated as a marginal character with little importance.

The relationship between Carnot and Saint-Just. Oh, this is gonna be long. Since both @saintjustitude and I have started studying Carnot's life we wondered what exactly the two thought of each other and if their interactions were truly tumultuous as it's always portrayed in French Revolution related media and described in Hippolyte Carnot's memoirs on his father. By checking some CSP decrees and letters, it seems like it wasn't the case at all, at least in the beginning, and that their relationship only started to deteriorate a couple of months prior to the events of Thermidor. Nothing confirms said theory better than this movie: Carnot and Saint-Just interact a lot; the former, in particular, gives the idea of genuinely caring about the latter: he takes time to salutes Saint-Just exclusively before leaving for Northern Austrian border; once Saint-Just and Hoche come back from Alsace, Carnot says enthusiastically how much he's proud of them for what they have achieved military-wise at such a young age. There's also a scene hinting to a certain intimacy between the two, in which Carnot goes to whisper something in his younger colleague's ear, who feels relieved afterwards. Last, but in no way least, when Carnot gets interrogated by Courtois after Thermidor and talks about Saint-Just, he does that smiling in a melancholic way, as if he regretted the death of Louis-Antoine.

There are various CSP-related scenes, but fundamentally they are of two kinds: those told by the narrator happening prior to Thermidor and those by Carnot himself after Thermidor. What's the difference between them? The former show a rather calm interactions among all the CSP members: despite their diverging opinions on certain matters, they always manage to come to an agreement in a civil way; this applies to the Carnot-Robespierre-Saint-Just trio too, of course. When the main character is interrogated by Courtois though, a complete different version of the events get revealed: here Saint-Just and Robespierre are constantly at odds with him, they are suspicious of him to the point of wanting to get rid of him; in return Carnot calls them ridiculous dictator. To sum up, what he says to Courtois is nothing different from what's reported in Hippolyte's memoirs on the various altercations occurring in the CSP in the last months right before Thermidor. The way it's all presented makes the spectator wonder whether Carnot is actually telling the truth or a skewed, exaggerated version of the events in order to save himself from the reaction that after hitting his former colleagues - Collot, Billaud, Barère - is coming for him too, something that the movie puts a lot of emphasis on. I want also to point out that none of the scenes narrated by Carnot during the interrogatory is shown in the first part of the movie, so one never knows whether they truly happened, or whether they are fabricated by the latter. I found it brilliant, because it shows in a clever way how memories and written mémoires can be biased and unreliable.

It's given importance to Carnot's role in the Napoléon's climb through military ranks, something which Barras usually gets an unfair amount of credit for.

I appreciated the final comments by Debré on the fact that, according to Carnot, a real democracy in which citizens are truly free can only be achieved through a strong central government and not a weak one as it's commonly believed at the time the historian is talking.

Despite the movie being favourable to Carnot, it doesn't exaggeratedly praise him; in fact, it shows that he too committed mistakes as anybody else at the time and that also whatever he said about his former colleagues who got executed in Thermidor - notably Robespierre and Saint-Just - might not be the whole story.

Some pictures (those for which there's no external link are mine)

Carnot (Alain Mottet)