Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Micitype Pretty Good

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Guy LA COMMUNE is a black and white docu-drama about the Paris Commune of 1871. Director Peter Watkins uses amateur actors and very limited sets to portray the rise and collapse of the Communards in the most tedious manner possible.Whilst the premise is interesting the entire films swiftly disappears under Peter Watkins intellectual pretensions. Watkins is obsessed by the notion of media control of information (his website has a long and tedious article on it). Much of the film therefore consists of watching the competing and anachronistic 'Versailles TV' (evil) broadcasts and 'Rebel TV' (good) broadcasts. Watching people watching TV does not make for compelling cinema. The Rebel TV proves just as biased as the evil Versailles TV, but because it validates Watkins politics he clearly considers this OK.The rest of the film consists of Parisian citizens standing around, talking to each other. There is no real narrative, no interesting characters and precious little development. The conversations are boring and highly repetitive. Never has revolution looked less interesting. Sadly one gets the feeling of a director past his prime, fighting the same old battles (Watkins clearly years for pseudo- Communist European revolution and the creation of an impossible political Utopia) but sustained to bloated heights (and lengths- six hours!) by an Arts Establishment that supports his politics. This is one of those films that really needed a producer who could say "No!".If you're an unrepentant Communist then you'll probably like this film. Otherwise you'll see it for what it is- tedious and wrong.

george karpouzas I am trying to remember when I first heard about this film. I think in Frech periodicals when an anniversary of the Commune took place. Latter there was mention of Peter Watkins in a French cinematic magazine- I think Cahiers du Cinema- which I saw and failed to buy. Finally I ordered the film from the organization that Peter Watkins has set up for the promotion of the film, Rebonde pour la Commune. Reflecting on another viewers comment they were not very commercially minded as Harry Potter for example.But the movie was worth it. It is absolutely of the beaten track. Although the events are known to anyone even relatively familiar with modern French history the rendering of the events by the filmmaker is based on two supremely ingenious innovations-one, the idea of transplanting audiovisual journalism in the 19th century- the device of introducing an official TV channel backing the government line and also two young journalists with microphones speaking and interviewing the Communards while the revolution was happening.Two,the idea of making the actors relate their cinematic experience as revolutionary actors with the present political conjecture.Those two ideas were very impressive although the second destroys the momentary suspension of disbelief on which every spectacle is based but that device of exposing the illusory character of a public spectacle has been known since the time of Aristophanes. I do not find it personally the most preferable but I think in such a movie it has a place. As for the idea of introducing modern media in the 19th century visual narrative, I found it brilliant since displayed the ability of modern propaganda devices in a earlier historical setting.The propaganda powers of the moving visual image is something historically unequaled- one can not compare its power with the pictures of biblical themes in the interiors of medieval churches or with the suggestion created by statues and temples in antiquity-Augustan Rome for example.Modern historians of the Commune have as sources the written word, the press and photographs that existed then and were used by the police to identify suspects. But film is another story-I can not remember if Watkins cites his sources but the movie follows a factual rendering of the Commune day by day and this is how it is structured with the emissions of the media used as interludes. An admirable achievement. P.S. I can not but observe the difference between this movie and the film about Marie-Antoinette. Of course the perspective was different since the film about the Queen was pro-royalist while the film about the Commune was pro-revolutionary but many other differences existed. The film of Watkins was based on the assumption that history is made by the masses whose action he tried to portray while Coppola's film was based on the assumption that history is made b personalities- by members of the ruling elites, since crowds- not smart crowds- but real crowds appear only once in Coppla's movie and then only in terrifying and then malleable fashion.I can not imagine a more fundamental difference of rendering events related to two of the major French Revolutions- a tribute to the richness of life and art that seeks to portray it.

nbott Once again, the National Gallery of Art film program has brought us another film we are unlikely to see at any other theater. This is an uneven but ultimately fascinating look at a relatively unknown period in French history, the 1871 Communard revolution in Paris right after the Franco-Prussian War. The filmmaker uses non-professional actors who were also allowed to be co-producers and to write their own lines to some extent. It is shot in black and white and on Beta Digital tape. The film technique reminds me of an old TV program from the 1950s' called "You Are There" in which today's media looks back on history and even interviews the participants in the historical drama.The film is very slow going which gives the viewer a total feeling of both being there right in the action on a day to day basis while looking down on it from afar. We live the everyday life of the people in Paris during this short period of 2 1/2 months. At some points, the actors stop the action and comment on their involvement in the making of the very film they are in. Also, they and the filmmaker comment on globalization and peoples' rights in today's world. History is brought forth into our present time and we see that all events in human history are more alike than they are different. This film is not for the average movie-goer. It is for a small audience of patient students of history and politics. It fascinated me but also tried that patience quite often. I would recommend not attempting to view this film without being well rested. It is in two parts of three hours each. Frankly, the filmmaker could have cut this down and still had a powerful history lesson for all of us.

amelagar Peter Watkins stands at the base of a form of historical documentaries known as 'documentary reconstruction'. Lightly based on battle re-enactments, Watkins hires amateur actors to play the roles of common people in the Paris of 1871. Famine and civil unrest cause a popular revolution, supported by followers of Karl Marx. The people take power and form a Commune, a communist government. After a few weeks, the official Versailles government regains the city by force, and tens of thousands of people are executed.Watkins' historical drama is based on the common people, which are shown in their everyday life. To do this, he introduced an anachronism: in the 1871 context, the people form a tv station. The Versaillais also have their official tv station. This way, the documentary becomes both a social project and a media experiment.