Marquis of Madness

QUILLS (2000)

MARQUIS OF MADNESS


Donatien Alphonse-Francois de Sade did not have his wicked tongue cut out –nor did he commit suicide by ingesting an Abbe’s rosary. These incidents are the result of playwright Doug Wright’s “artistic license”, as he wrote the screenplay, giving us an intense historical drama that could be said to “be based on actual events”. The swarthy and histrionic goings on of the plot was often performed by characters that were based on actual people, but so was BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966). Later Wright won a Pulitzer Prize for his play, I AM MY OWN WIFE. In QUILLS when De Sade’s prose is read aloud several times, it is actually Wright’s words, not the Marquis’.

When it comes to persecution, repression, torture, and hue and cries for sexual liberation –this film is rife with intense sequences. Some of it brings to mind the play by Peter Weiss that won a Tony on Broadway in 1966, and then became a landmark film, MARAT/SADE (1967), aka THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT, AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM AT CHARENTON, DIRECTED BY THE MARQUIS DE SADE (one of the longest movie titles on record, vying for honors with Roman Polanski’s THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, OR PARDON ME BUT YOUR TEETH ARE IN MY NECK (1967), and/or Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGLOVE, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964).) Some of the religious zealous hypocrisy made me want to re-watch Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971).

Director Philip Kaufman, a writer that directs, has only given us 14 films since 1965. Two other controversial films having an erotic nature were THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988), and HENRY AND JUNE (1990). To his credit, with QUILLS, even though it is based on a play, we never feel the normal claustrophobic and pedantic responses that adapted plays have given us in the past. The asylum at Charenton became a real place, and the action flowed interestingly. He edited the film tightly, and kept the pace up, leading us cleverly from one plot twist to the next.

He has directed only 14 films since 1965. Besides the two rather erotic films mentioned above, some of his best include THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1972), with Cliff Robertson and Robert Duvall, THE WHITE DAWN (1974), and the incredibly well done THE RIGHT STUFF (1983), with Sam Shepard and Ed Harris. He wrote the screenplay for, and was the first choice of director on THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976). He also wrote the story and treatment for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981).

In this tale the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) has been a “guest” at Charenton for several years, living a luxurious lifestyle in a suite of cells, surrounded by books, wines, and good food, and allowed to continue with his writing. It was all paid for with a “letter de cachet” set up by his wife, Renee (Jane Menelaus –the actual spouse of Geoffrey Rush). An empathetic fetching chambermaid, Madeleine, (Kate Winslet) smuggled out his manuscripts and delivered them to a publisher’s representative. He was befriended by the handsome asylum director, Abbe du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), and he is allowed to direct fellow inmates in theatrical plays as therapy; and they become popular to attend with the aristocracy. Monarch Napoleon becomes “appalled” at the libertine eroticism of De Sade’s provocative prose. He bans the books, which guarantees their financial success with underground presses, and he sent in a callous completely sadistic administrative hatchet man, Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine). After De Sade publicly humiliated Royer-Collard with an erotic and violent play barely masking the real life situation of the good doctor, Collard has De Sades personal belongings confiscated and removed from his cell, including his ink and quills, leaving it even more barren than the others.

Quotes from QUILLS:
De Sade: Why should I love God? He strung up his only son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me!
De Sade: Suppose one of your precious inmates attempted to walk on water and drowned –would you blame the bible? I think not.
De Sade: Conversation like certain portions of the anatomy, always run more smoothly when lubricated.
De Sade: Are your convictions so fragile that they cannot stand in opposition to me? Is your God so flimsy, so weak? For shame!
Roger-Collard: If you are going to martyr yourself Abbe, do it for God, not the chambermaid.

One sidebar of note, all the actors playing the inmates had their characters fully diagnosed with genuine mental illnesses by a psychiatrist.

But De Sade would not be stopped, feeling that his writing, and the artistic freedom allowing him to write, was worth being martyred for. To get his prose out to his readership, he wrote first in wine on his sheets. When that too was taken, he began to prick his fingers, and using his own blood, he wrote on his clothes. Stripped naked, beaten to a pulp, tortured, chained and censored, on the very day of his death, after his tongue had been cut out, he continued to write with his own feces, filling up the walls of his cell with his odiferous scribbling. Not having the visceral and emotional power of watching William Wallace being eviscerated as he screamed, “Freedom!” –still we are left with an image of an artist, a pariah, a political hot potato, lying naked chained to the floor and walls, but somehow triumphant as he chose the actual time of his death committing suicide by swallowing the Abbe’s rosary.

De Sade is presented as boorish, brilliant, randy, even kinky and bisexual –but not malicious; which in real life he probably was. Coulmier was driven mad by his unrequited and unresolved lust, sorrow over the death of Madeleine, and the political stresses forced upon him by Roger-Collard. First he cast himself as De Sade’s benefactor and friend, and then later as he became an inmate himself, he became a real champion of De Sade’s principles and philosophies –picking up the quill himself, and starting his own wild-eyed unrestrained manuscript. Roger-Collard was portrayed by Caine as brutal, sadistic, sexist, bordering on pedophilia, and purely evil –and as he wielded his authority crushing his compeers, his “villain” became one dimensional, almost a caricature. It is hard to decide if the epilogue of the film that showed Collard taking over the underground printing of De Sade’s writing was meant to be penance or just another serving of hypocrisy and greed.

Geoffrey Rush was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this role in 2001, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe. He is a classically trained actor from Australia . He remains very active in theater there. At one point he was roommates with Mel Gibson while they were in college. Rush has appeared in 37 films since 1981. When he won his Oscar for SHINE (1996) that actually was his seventh film. In 1998 he cashed in on his classical training, appearing in LES MISERABLES, ELIZABETH , and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. He was memorable as Trotsky in FRIDA (2002), a pirate captain in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (2003), and he was wonderful in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS (2004).

In truth history laughs at art here. De Sade was of short stature, was in his 70’s, was “grotesquely obese”, and died in his sleep wrestling with the demons of his own making. His second wife, and their daughter, had been allowed to reside at Charenton –with full access to De Sade. Doug Wright’s “artistic” version of events had a lot more dramatic flair of course. The actual plays De Sade was asked to direct, casting the inmates at Charention were all conventional French theatrical fare –old favorites of the period. Those bizarre sexual and violent orgy scenes from the film, satirizing the sadness of Collard and his child bride were wholly fiction. Msr. Roger-Collard never really had such power or influence over Abbe Coulmier or the Marquis de Sade, nor was he such a heinous villain. The actual Madeleine had countless sexual encounters with De Sade, and she was only 13 years old. De Sade had always hoped that his plays would some day be performed by the “Comedie Francaise”. Post French Revolution, De Sade was very politically active, and for a time held public office. He lived to be 74 years old, spending 34 of those turbulent years in various states of incarceration –at one point narrowly escaping the guillotine.

The Marquis de Sade has been portrayed by several actors. One of the best was Patrick Magee in MARAT/SADE (1967). Add to that Michel Piccoli in THE MILKY WAY (1969), Klaus Kinski in JUSTINE (1969), Max Kiebach in DE SADE (1969), Robert Englund ( of Freddie Kruger fame) in NIGHT TERRORS (1996), Nick Mancuso in THE MARQUIS DE SADE (1996), and the wonderful actor Daniel Auteal in SADE (2000). I can assure you De Sade’s life, in some form or other, will continue to be the subject of many more films in the future.

This film presented the Marquis de Sade truly as a martyr, destroyed by the thick arrogance and censorship of church and state. We found ourselves cheering him on, accepting him as a protagonist, watching him manipulate the mob and laugh into the vicious teeth of torture. Nothing could stop him from continuing to produce his writing, not even death; especially death. His prose, erotic and political, irrepressible and conventional, often well composed and refined continues to fascinate, to interest new generations of active minds. It lives on seemly ad infinitum.

When his writings were challenged for being “just pornographic”, that perhaps was an oversimplification. Pornography is defined as,” 1. material in books that depict erotic behavior and intend to cause sexual excitement. 2. the depiction of sexual acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick emotional response.” That being the case is it possible that a lot of literature has “pornographic” passages? LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER, and PEYTON PLACE come to mind. It has been suggested to me that only by reading copious amounts of De Sade’s actual writings can one even begin to judge its merits or lack of. Some day I will do just that. In the meantime, QUILLS (2000) as a play, and as a film, takes us on a rollercoaster ride that never slows, twisting us upside down as we consider the issues of creativity, free speech, hypocrisy, religion, sexuality, necrophilia, rape, literature, the Napoleonic era, the French Revolution, corporal punishment, madness, and politics.

Glenn Buttkus 2007