The Fanatics is a play produced as part of something called Theatre 625 in 1968, for the BBC and directed by Rudolph Cartier (The Quatermass Experiment, 1984). One of the reasons Cartier, an Austrian, made such a name for himself at the Beeb was that he knew all these European plays nobody here had heard of. Like Lubitsch with his Hungarians.
The source here is a play called L’Affair Calas by Stellio Lorenzi, Andre Castelot and Alain Decaux, adapted for TV by Max Marquis. It’s a true story of injustice from France in the 1760s — when a Huguenot hangs himself, the Catholic authorities rush to accuse his father of murder, on the assumption that the son was considering switching faith. The father is tortured to death — and then Voltaire gets involved.
My initial interest was Cartier’s involvement, but then I saw we’ve got Leonard Rossiter as Voltaire and Alan Badel as “the Capitoul” — the authority figure whose blind prejudice causes the tragedy. Those are two of my favourite hams, though sadly they never appear together. If they did I might suffer a fatal overplotz.
The narrative has aspects of WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, with the ailing Voltaire being told by all and sundry that he mustn’t take the case, it’d kill him. Among these advisors is the splendid Bernard Hepton. Rosalie Crutchley is Madame Calas.
I also got very excited to see this chap, as the chief torturer, breaking a man on the wheel before the titles have even rolled (Take THAT, Mrs. Whitehouse!). I know him from all kinds of stuff. His name is Milton Reid and he’s an Anglo-Indian ex-wrestler. He has a laborious fight with Roger Moore in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and is Vincent Price’s first victim in DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN (death by telephone!). His vaguely “exotic” looks got him cast in all sorts of inappropriate roles. But his appearance always gives me pleasure.
The real surprise was John Paul, the ship’s captain from A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, whose existence I’d never really been aware of before, though I’d seen COUNTESS before and also DOOMWATCH. He plays Calas, and he suffers mightily all through the show — bereaved, accused, tortured and executed. He’s very good.
The acting generally here is much better than in Out of the Unknown (see yesterday), though it is, to use Alex Cox’s phrase, “a certain type of acting.” Slightly rhetorical and olde-worlde. The kind of acting where people hold out parchments and rap them with their knuckles to make a satisfying BAP sound. Here, one man holds out the document and another man makes it go BAP. Teamwork! Ensemble playing at its finest!
Cartier blocks beautifully — the TV play, rehearsed extensively and then either filmed live or in great twenty-minute sections, doesn’t allow quite the finesse of a movie, but the rigours involved make for sound creative choices: make every shot last as long as it possibly can (figure out when the angle’s going to fall apart, and intercede before it does); cut only with a definite dramatic purpose; keep lively by moving the people about and forcing the cameras to work to keep up.
Badel has the best part — his character is semi-fictitious, and amalgam of various guilty officials and a work of the imagination — it’s fascinating to work out what’s going on with this guy. Bigotry, certainly, but to what extent is he sincerely deluded and to what extent just going with what seems expedient? There’s no good result in a case like this, just different fascinating shades of evil. Badel keeps us guessing, which stops the capitoul from devolving into a stock baddie.
shadowplay 