That Night in Varennes
- Jean -Louis Barrault: Nicolas Edme de La Bretonne Restif
- Marcello Mastroianni: Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt
- Harvey Keitel: Thomas Paine
- Jean -Claude Brialy: Monsieur Jacob
- Andréa Ferréol: Mme Adélaïde Gagnon
- Michel Vitold: De Florange
- Laura Betti: Virginia Capacelli
- Enzo Jannacci: The Italian juggler
- Pierre Malet: Emile Delage, the revolutionary student
- Daniel Gélin: De Wendel
- Hugues Quester: Jean -Louis Romeuf
- Dora Doll: Nanette Precy
- Jean -Louis Trintignant: Monsieur Sauce
- Michel Piccoli: Louis XVI
- Eléonore Hirt: The Queen Marie- Antoinette
Flight to Varennes is a French-Italian film directed by Ettore Scola from the year 1982.
The film is based on the 1982 novel, La Nuit de Varennes ou l'Impossible n'est pas français by Catherine Rihoit and treated a historical event from 1791, namely the escape attempt of the French King Louis XVI. and his wife, the Queen Marie -Antoinette to Varennes (Lorraine ) and their arrest.
Action
The plot of the film is structured in the road movie: In June 1791 the writer Restif de la Bretonne will randomly get in the brothel evidence of strange events in the royal palace. When he curiously roams around this in the dead of night, he sees a mysterious carriage in the middle of the Parisian night the Palace (Palais Royal) leaves, while a lady whose servant carrying a bulky piece of luggage, which aims in a different direction. The next day, he tries to reach his friend Thomas Paine before his departure for Lorraine still on the Posthof. When he Paine recognizes the gentlewoman from the night as a travel companion, he decides spontaneously to follow the stagecoach on horseback. On the way he met the traveling on the same road old Casanova, Restif invites for passenger ride. After a breakneck overtaking the carriage of the writer suffer a broken axle, and is caught again by the mail-coach. It can be seen Casanova, and invites him and Restif for a passenger ride. On and in the coach a travel company has gathered so whose members represent significant segments of contemporary society, reflecting in different rounds of talks in the coach itself, in inns and rest under the open sky in their dialogues on the revolutionary Zeitläufte. The positions and worldviews of a royal official who is traveling with his mistress, an opera singer, the court nobility ( Casanova, Comtesse de la Borde ), intellectuals ( Restif, Paine ), the self-conscious emerging middle class ( De Wendel, Madame Gagnon ) and a revolutionary student meet partially in irreconcilable confrontation, partly in an elegant, flirtatious conversation. When the horse exchange and catches the travel company always finds the latest news about the political developments in Paris and soon also as the present on the flight of King, which they nilly willy follow that they are traveling on the same road. As is known, that the King has been arrested in Varennes, the travel company follows the train of the population in the small town, and is a witness to his formal arrest by delegates of the National Assembly. At the end of the Comtesse de la Borde open the mysterious package that she has afterwards transported the royal carriage: it contains the Staatsrobe of the king, which is draped on a clothes rack, before the Comtesse settle down for the last time on his knees.
Criticism
The lexicon of the International film judged very positively: " A film about the revolution, but not as a conflict of ideologies, but a more differentiated picture of the fears, hopes, memories and visions. Director Scola portrays his characters (played by an excellent ensemble of actors ) with loving precision with great wit and charm, with a dash of tragic irony. "