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Adapted from a successful French television play, 'The Fanatics' is a
powerful and haunting drama about religious persecution. Set in
eighteenth-century France, the play tells the tragic true story of Jean Calas, a
Protestant tortured and executed by the Catholic judiciary following his son's
suicide. It was an early colour production, directed for BBC2's Theatre 625
anthology by Rudolph Cartier, whose extensive television career betrays a
preoccupation with persecution and fanaticism.
Calas's story is seen in flashback as it is related to the writer and
philosopher Voltaire, who fights to clear the dead man's name. Leonard
Rossiter's nuanced performance as Voltaire lends the part the determination and
moral outrage required of such a formidable figure. John Paul
is also notable as Calas, moving from disbelief, to desperation, to defiance of
his persecutor. However, Alan Badel makes the greatest impression as the zealot
De Beaudrigue, hounding Calas beyond all reason. Badel plays De Beaudrigue not
as an evil villain, but as a man blind to his partiality, sincerely believing in
his course of action; the character is all the more chilling as a result. Cyril
Shaps also appears in one of the 'little man' roles that the actor made a
speciality, here the legal clerk Moynier, whose honour forces him to make a
stand against the prejudice of his superior.
The bulk of the play was recorded in the studio over two days, with Cartier
taking full advantage of the possibilities for retaking and recording scenes out
of story order, luxuries that had only recently become available. It made for a
particularly polished production, with none of the rough edges familiar from
dramas of just a few years earlier. Cartier also made characteristically good
use of pre-filming, with scenes shot in advance at one of London's Catholic
churches. Overlaid with Latin chants and subtly lit, the sequences of the
sinisterly hooded White Penitents are highly atmospheric. Equally effective is
the play's striking opening scene, depicting Calas on the scaffold. "Confess!"
intones Badel as the victim's limbs are smashed and back-lighting turns the
figures into silhouettes.
The torture scenes - considered graphic in their day - attracted some
criticism from viewers, but the play was otherwise highly lauded following its
sole transmission. 'The Fanatics' is an ever-relevant study of extremism and
injustice, and remains Cartier's most potent study of
persecution.
Oliver Wake
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1. 'Confess!' (1:19)
