AllMovie

In 1789, only a few years after France helped colonists in America win their freedom from Great Britain, a band of Parisian rebels staged an attack on the Bastille, looting needed supplies of food and materiel after the increasingly callous French authorities ignored their pleas. The incident proved to be the first salvo in a civil war that raged in France for the next ten years, with the allies of freedom and democracy (mostly in the working or peasant classes) struggling to tear down the rule of the French aristocracy and their long-standing feudal system. The French Revolution is a documentary which offers a detailed look at this pivotal event in European history, created using historical re-enactments, classic painting and drawings, and interviews with authors and historians who share the story of the revolution and the major players in the tale, including Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, Jean-Paul Marat, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Maximilien Robespierre. Narrated by Edward Herrmann, The French Revolution was originally produced for the cable television network The History Channel.