Feast Of All Saints
List Price:
Our Price: $17.41
You Save: $9.54 (35%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $15.88 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: *Brand: Showtime Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 212 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-10-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Showtime
Movie Reviews of Feast Of All Saints
Movie Review: My take on this movie
Summary: 5 Stars
My take on Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints
A beautiful movie about America's least known group of People in Antebellum Louisiana, Gens de Colour. As a woman of African, American Indian, and White ancestry, I've always been fascinated by those people in New Orleans who formed an aristocracy unto themselves and were free. They have their rituals, customs, and amusements such as the famous Quadroon Balls. They have rights and freedoms that most blacks and multiracials, slave and free, in antebellum America didn't have, yet they were not completely free because the power elite of that time didn't want to share power with the free people of color. They may conduct business with them, but refuse to invite them to their houses for dinner or social function.
Anne Rice has done an excellent job telling the story through the eyes of young Marcel, who came of age at 17, was promised by his absentee father an education abroad. However, because of the racism and jealousy of the Ferronaire family as well as the economic troubles at Bontemps, he was denied his lifelong dream of going there to pursue his prestigious education at the Sorbonne. He took matters in his own hands and went to the plantation where his father lives and was forbidden by his father to visit there. It was there where Marcel was brutally whipped and kicked by his own his father, in the presence of his estranged wife and children. What man would abuse his own flesh and blood? It has to be motivated by race and class: Marcel must learn his place in the white world of 19th-Century Louisiana. He learned it the hard way through the denial of privileges his absentee father enjoy as well as his humiliation and abuse by M. Ferronaire. He now learned that he must cast his allegience to people of color, whose lives have been shaped by society's limitations and its racist, classist behavior and ritual. Also, Marcel learned more about slavery, the war in Saint Domingne(Now Haiti), the limitations placed upon free people of color, the slave status of his half sister Lisette, who has the same father as he: she was the product of a liaison between Ferronaire and Zazu, a very handsome black slave woman from the Ferronaire plantation. He was upset at his mother for being ignorant of history, for her adopted mother brought her from Saint Domingue during the war of independence from France and like Lisette, a product of a liaison between a rich white planter and a beautiful black slave mother who is unnamed in both novel and film adaptation.
His mother's insane devotion to her absentee protector didn't help Marcel's recent problems, yet he must leave his family to live at his schoolteacher's house or else they lose monetary and material support from M. Ferronaire. Humiliated and hurt, Marcel offer himself to him, but Mercier refuses, citing his childish dependency upon others, especially by those whom didn't truly love him. His father was a prime example.
The free multiracial women of New Orleans were in a very precarious position. While they were praised for their "exotic" beauty, they weren't allow to marry white men. Pernicious class prejudices made it difficult to marry free multiracial men for that meant lower social status. Some of the women chose convent life, but even that is out of the question for most of them. So they settle into a lifestyle of their mothers: That being a well-kept mistress of a white man. Only certain white men qualify. He has to be wealthy, refined, educated, and of the upper class. Those women wouldn't settle for less. Case in point: The argument between Cecile Ste Marie and her daughter over her daughter's position. When Cecile's daughter Marie chose to be married to Monsieur de Lemontant's son, she was very furious at her choice, for she is expected to follow her mother in the tradition of having a wealthy, refined white man as her protector. She recently lost her lover in death who didn't bother to leave her family any provision in the event of his passing. Marcel's exile in San Souci and her daughter's pursuit of Richard Lemontant didn't help her current financial woes. She summon her long-neglected daughter to discuss about the situation and for her to accept placage, which her daughter consider it another form of slavery in a gilded cage without the benefits of marriage. They had a very heated argument over it that caused her mom to summon her less than respectable friend, Dolly Rose to her house to help Marie to see that her decision of marrying Richard isn't in her mom's best interest. She steadfast held to her position which led to disasterous consequences afterwards.
I couldn't forgive Cecile St. Marie for the neglect of her daughter, indifferent to the suffering her son had at the hands of his callous and insensitive father, the brutal rape of her daughter, and the suicide of their half-sister Lisette after the incident at the voodoo brothel. He finally found peace with his people, gens de colour libre at the end of the movie. He decides to become a photographer and to work with the people in his hometown instead of studying abroad. He also found renewed love from Anna Bella Monroe played by Bianca Lawson from "Save the Last Dance." Anna Bella emerge as the stronger character in all of this and much more, even with the placage with Aglae's brother and eventual abandonment by him. He didn't left her in poverty, for he left her the house along with all the possessions as well as lifelong monetary support which Philippe didn't do for the Ste. Marie family.
I wish Americans know more of this least-known group of people andstop the unnecessary divisions among the human race. America needs to acknowlege their ties to one another, that racial/ethnic category terms such as "blacks" and "whites" are just artificial social categories design to keep people apart and resentful of one another. We are one people regardless of our various racial and ethnic origins.
I recommend this movie to those who want to know the whole truth about American history instead of the doctored version parroted by the media and educational system.
Summary of Feast Of All Saints
Anne Rice?s The Feast of All Saints is a tale set in 1840?s New Orleans about "free people of color", who formed their own class at a time when the predominant role of blacks in society was as slaves. The film focuses on the ordeal of one young man named Marcel Ste. Marie (Ri?chard), who searches for the truth about his heritage. As he finds his individual path into the future, Marcel is fully aware that he is a child of African and European descent, but his story is uniquely American.Similar DVD Movies
NightjohnBRIDGES,BEAU; Release date: 2005-06-07; DVD
Best price: $3.36
Price in other shops:
Ruby's Bucket of BloodShowtime Entertainment; Release date: 2002-10-01; DVD
Best price: $8.71
Price in other shops:
Eve's BayouLions Gate; Release date: 2003-02-18; DVD
Best price: $4.78
Price in other shops:
Up From SlaveryDIG; Release date: 2011-09-13; DVD
Best price: $3.69
Price in other shops:
Alex Haley's QueenBERRY,HALLE; Release date: 2008-01-15; DVD
Best price: $17.21
Price in other shops:
Their Eyes Were Watching GodBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2005-11-29; DVD
Best price: $3.47
Price in other shops:
MandingoLEG; Release date: 2008-06-03; DVD
Best price: $4.36
Price in other shops:
The Feast of All Saintsby Anne Rice
Ballantine Books; Published: 1992-01-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.84
Price in other shops:
Sally Hemings An American Love StoryEcho; Release date: 2005-02-08; DVD
Best price: $6.99
The Courage to LoveGaiam; Release date: 2004-11-30; DVD
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops: