In February, Navis Pictures released its latest film, The War of the Vendée. It tells the story of the short-lived resistance movement in the countryside of western France to the anti-Catholic Republican government that sprung from the French Revolution.
It is the second full-length feature for Navis Pictures, which in 2009 released St. Bernadette of Lourdes (available from Ignatius Press and in the gift shop at the Lourdes grotto itself). The company works with a unique conceit: its full-length, Hollywood-quality movies are peopled exclusively with nonprofessional child actors, teenage and younger.
Navis Pictures founder Jim Morlino lives in Connecticut with his wife, Frances, and their six homeschooled children. He spoke with Catholic Answers Magazine editor Tim Ryland about his latest release and the apologetic potential of filmmaking.
Tim Ryland: Why did you pick this story as one worthy of spending all the time and effort on?
Jim Morlino: When I first started telling people about the story, they said it didn’t sound like a story you’d really want to tell. It doesn’t have a happy ending. And yes, the Vendée peasants were defeated miserably; they were annihilated, martyred at every turn and just wiped off the face of the earth. Yet what is the fruit of that? The blood of those martyrs waters the seeds of faith, and their victory was the restoration of their religious liberty, the reopening of those churches that had been closed by the government. Saints were born out of this war. I think as a Church we share in that victory. So it was a gripping tale, and that’s why I wanted to tell it. But I think there are real lessons for Catholics in terms of apologetics. Why do we study the lives of the saints? Why do we study the martyrs? Because they are constant, ongoing inspirations for us.
Give a thumbnail sketch of that period in history.
It was such a huge time period that it was difficult for me to narrow it down for a movie. The main conflict began January 21, 1793, the date of the execution of Louis XVI, and lasted to about July of the same year—really only about six months, but we refer in the movie to a much longer period. And the fighting didn’t end; some stubborn people continued fighting. There were flare-ups for years afterward.
But the main resistance was crushed pretty quickly.
Yes, but they had some amazing successes in the first few weeks and months, so much so that they were poised to march on Paris, and it was seriously considered. There were stunning victories, miraculous really, and then, of course, the genocide began. And that’s how it ended. But in our story we have an epilogue, so we get a glimpse at the fruit of that sacrifice and the results that would be of interest to a larger audience as an apologia for the Faith.
What brought your attention to this story?
After doing the Bernadette film, which was fairly female-centric, I was looking for a new story to tell, and I wanted to do something for the boys—an action picture, something where they would get to run around and kill each other. But also demonstrate great virtues—courage and perseverance and sacrifice. A friend of mine had reviewed a book about the Vendée and mentioned the story to me. I started reading, and I was mesmerized. I thought, wow, this would work. The blackout about this event intrigued me. I had never even heard of it. I did realize after studying the French Revolution that it wasn’t all it is purported to have been. It wasn’t all egalité and liberté and fraternité—terrible things went on. And the Reign of Terror—many of us have a vague idea that a lot of people lost their heads, and there was perhaps an excess of passion. And yet, as you read more about it, any thinking person could not but come away from reading about the Reign recognizing that there has to have been some sort of demonic influence there.
Are you saying the French Revolution was demonic in nature?
Insofar as the Father of Lies tempts men to do bad things, yes. The gravity, the atrocities, the degree of barbarism, the unrelenting viciousness just boggles the mind. Yet there was a whole story that I had never heard of, and that was that there was resistance throughout the country. The only real successful resistance happened in the west of France, where the souls of the people had been so well-formed a generation earlier by Louis de Montfort. That has to have been the key. These people were real believers. They believed the tenets of the Faith; they practiced it; they revered their priests; their priests were by and large good, holy men who served their flock. They loved their king. They were hardworking, poor people but by and large happy.
What sources did you use to write the screenplay?
One of my main sources was A French Genocide: The Vendée by a French historian named Reynald Secher, published in 1996.
I understand the book caused quite a stir because of the use of the word genocide, which is hotly contested among historians in regard to this episode.
Yes, the book caused an uproar, especially in academia. But if you do a careful reading of the facts, it was undeniable, really. The French Republican government really set out to wipe the people off of their land and to erase the memory of that particular people who were so faithful to their Church. Does that qualify as genocide? I don’t know all the particulars of the use of the word.
The dictionary definition of genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” It seems to me that you could argue this was the latter. Catholicism, certainly in that time, was a culture.
Yes, and the atrocities against that culture are mind-boggling. That was a difficulty for me, because I wanted to be faithful to the facts of the story, but there’s no way I could tell the story in its entirety, especially in a film aimed at young people. Necrophilia, cannibalism, you name it—forced abortion, splitting pregnant women open and putting their babies on pikes, roasting people alive, poisoning wells, murdering nuns and priests by the thousands by drowning them in the river, stripped naked and tied together and calling it a “Republican wedding.” So what I was looking for was an adventure story, but what I found was more like a horror story. Just the absolute and utter demonic disdain for the Church and everything it stood for. It’s unbelievable, the magnitude of the story. And all the more stupefying that something that huge that resulted in the deaths of as many as 400,000 people—in such a recent period in history—is largely unknown.
And yet there were acts of atrocity from the Catholics as well.
There certainly were atrocities on both sides. As I read it, those on the Catholic side have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, we have one reported in our film, a famous one that most people cite. There were 500 French soldiers killed. But from what I have read from multiple sources, it was an example of the unbridled passion of these peasants and farmers. The inclination was there to avenge, to do to the French soldiers what they had done to their own brothers. The resistance leaders were on their way but didn’t make it in time to stop the retaliation of the men, so things got out of control. But there was no systemic policy. Much more often than not the Catholic leaders exhorted their men to show great mercy and restraint to the prisoners. They took thousands and thousands of French prisoners. But there were many, many more atrocities committed by the French on the Catholics than the other way around.
What else did you use as source material?
The one that really got me going was a slim volume by Michael Davies called For Altar and Throne, which he wrote on the occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the Vendée region. He wrote it to honor that and the memory of these people. I found myself weeping, just reading about these good Catholic people and their noble sacrifices. Another was The Guillotine and the Cross by Warren Carroll, a great book about the French Revolution. Also, Citizens by Simon Schama. And there’s another small book by William Bush, To Quell the Terror, the story of the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne, which we don’t go into much detail about in the movie.
Obviously, in writing the screenplay, you have to keep in mind your limitations—what you can and can’t do with your resources is going to shape the writing of it.
Right. I mean, how can you tell the story of a huge civil war in an hour and a half, or any other epic battle? This just cries out for a larger treatment, and it was so difficult to pare it down. I ended up combining certain characters and events, so it’s not a hundred percent accurate in that regard, but it’s more of a dramatic retelling in the spirit of the story. That’s the license of the filmmaker, I suppose—to make the story accessible.
How many of the characters are based on real people?
Most of them. There never was a clear leader of this uprising, but there was one man who commanded more attention than others. His name was Jacques Cathelineau. He was just a simple peddler in a small town, and because of the strength of his character, he rose in the ranks—not an experienced military man but a good, solid man whom other men would follow. There were others—noblemen who commanded their own battalions and sometimes joined forces with each other. Most of the characters in the film are real people. The trick is that we’ve put them together when several of them never met each other, but we have them living in the same village for convenience’s sake.
You explained why you were attracted to the story as a filmmaker, but what about the film do you think will appeal to potential viewers?
I love stories of sacrifice, stories about conversion. I love hearing stories of people who would give everything for their faith. And so it appeals to me, and if others are moved by the story or find it intriguing, great. I didn’t set out to do the story because I was convinced that others would like it. It’s really because I used myself as the litmus test.
How many actors did you work with?
There are more than 250 in this cast.
Is there a reason you used an all-child cast?
The real nuts and bolts reason is they’re cheap. [Laughs] I couldn’t do a movie like this for less than a couple of million dollars, I’m sure, if I was hiring real, professional actors. I started out doing films with my own children just for fun, and I realized there was something especially attractive about the untrained, native creativity that every person created in the image and likeness of God has written on his heart by God himself. He’s the ultimate artist, the Creator, and there’s something beautiful and spiritual about using the gifts that he’s given us to offer something back to him. What I’ve found is that if you spend some time with these kids and treat them with respect, many times they give performances that rival those of people who have been to acting school for years and years. When I was an actor, we were always trying to get back to the simplicity and innocence of childhood. But these young people are still there. They have an emotional availability and great imaginations.
Do you think it might be a stumbling block for some viewers as to believability?
Perhaps for some. But because of the genuine innocence and honesty of the performances, I’ve found most people just tend to forget they’re watching children after the first ten minutes or so.
How much did you spend on the film?
It’s a hard question to answer. Not to be cagey, there’s just so many different ways of slicing it or figuring the numbers. If I consider part of the budget a salary, which for me is a nonexistent thing, because no one paid me to do the movie, the money had to come from somewhere to support my family for x number of months, so I do think it needs to be factored in. The movie basically cost about $70,000.
But you’ve got battle scenes and hundreds of people on camera, the props and costumes to go along with it. I would imagine most people would think that’s a pretty low figure to get the quality you got.
If you want to figure it another way, that I was living off my savings or investments or whatever, then there’s a dollar figure for what we actually spent. We really only spent about $30,000, even less. I do think it’s great stewardship of money, and a lot of it is sweat equity. A lot of people worked a lot of hours to get the costumes together or to organize certain aspects. I saved a lot of money because I’m basically a jack of all trades and master of none. I’m doing the writing, the lighting, the producing, the cinematography, the editing, the special effects, the titles—
The voiceover.
Yes. But the one place we spent a disproportionate amount of money is in the score.
Does a film have to look and sound professional in order to be effective?
It certainly helps. Hollywood filmmaking has “rules” for a reason. People expect the sound will be realistic, they expect that the camera will be steady and that it will move artfully through space and that the costumes will be uniform and that the performances will be realistic and that the dialogue will sound convincing. If you don’t have those things, then whatever communicating you want to do will be much harder to do.
How did you learn those rules?
Mostly by osmosis. I never studied filmmaking formally. As much as one can learn from being on the other side of the camera, that’s where I got a lot of what I think I know, from being an actor and being in front of the camera, but watching, always watching how the director did what he did and listening to how he spoke to me or other actors and being directed in plays and films and commercials. Also watching the camera crew, the lighting crew, why does the camera sit here. And then watching films, deconstructing them.
What do you think Catholics will come away with from the film? Conversely, what do you think nonbelievers will make of it?
I’d be interested in hearing the reaction of nonbelievers, because I would hope they would say, “Wow, they must have spent all that time and money, and the result is gorgeous, because of something else; because they believe.” I recognize that art is worth doing, that certain stories are worth telling, that certain films are worth working hard on because I believe. I believe in God. I believe that his church is the Catholic Church, and I want others to come to faith because they see beauty in this film. So, even though it wasn’t my only reason for doing this, it certainly is my hope that anyone could watch the film and be moved by it to a place of faith, to find what I find attractive also attractive to them. God for me is attractive. I want to express that, I want to praise and honor him, I want to share that. And that’s what apologetics is about, right? To explain something to others so that the obstacles will disappear and they ultimately will come to faith themselves.
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Jim Morlino is a former professional actor who was born in Los Angeles and raised in San Diego. He lives with his wife, Frances, and their six children in Danbury, Connecticut.