Just out of curiosity.
There's a scene where one of the lunatics hold the small lady from behind touching her tits for a long time.
Why was this considered normal?
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- He moves his lips when he reads. What does that tell you about him?
I found that scene pretty offensive, because although Coulmier and his wife are horrified their daughter starts to enjoy it. What can you say? The sexual politics of this movie and plenty of others of the time are pretty dodgy (I'm thinking of Straw Dogs).
shareCoulmier's daughter represents youth in general and the attitude of the young to the excitement of rebellion. Coulmier represents a revolutionary government and its need to pay a certain amount of obeisance to the revolution while imposing order (a dilemma). He disapproves of the advances to his daughter, but politics restrain him. Note that Coulmier's daughter very enthusiastically (but in a "pipsqueak" voice) shouts "Vive la revolution" later in the play.
Very significantly at the end when the "real" revolution starts, she finds herself just a delectable morsel for the revolutionary who (ideals aside) is more interested in meatier things.
A microcosm of real revolutions. "Normal" only in the sense that it represents the ways things so often work out.
The climax of this reminds me powerfully of another 'orgy of revolution' scene, in John Adams' Nixon in China, when Madame Mao whips up the crowd into a frenzy which quickly degenerates into carnal mayhem, all ideals cast aside. Both are great at giving a glimpse of the real operations of revolution, which, while ostensibly occupied with the lofty motives of intellectuals, are very often little more than an engine of uninhibited social mayhem that (briefly) gratifies the masses usually repressed appetites.
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