King of Hearts
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DVD details
Actor: Alan Bates, Genevieve BujoldDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of King of Hearts
DVD Review: Madness Squared
Summary: 5 Stars
Writer/director Philippe de Broca considered this film to be his "crowning achievement" -no pun intended. Not a prolific director, giving us small classics like THAT MAN FROM RIO (1964), he labored over each film lovingly. Early on in his career he spent time as a AD for both Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut. A devout humorist, he appeared in the film in the cameo role of Corporal Adolf Hitler. A colorful human being, he was once married to Margot Kidder, and had a child with Marthe Keller. He released this film with unflinching accuracy right in the middle of America's anti-war rallies and protests of the 60's. It achieved an instant cult status. For several years in Seattle it rivaled the outrageous ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1970) as a popular midnight screening. In Cambridge, MA, it broke a world record for being shown on one screen for over five years.
We follow the zany WWI adventures of Scottish Private Charles Plumpick, an ornithologist mistaken for an ordinance expert, who was sent to French village on what was considered a suicide mission. It was nearing the end of the war, and as the German garrison prepared to leave the village, they wired up all of their excess bombs and explosives, cramming them into a huge concrete blockhouse erected in the town square. It stood under the church tower, with its statuesque clock complete with a mechanical armored knight who clicked out and pounded a bell with his battleaxe at midnight. The fiendish spiked-helmeted Hessians used this as a trigger for their planned Gaulish mini-apocalypse.
The entire population of the town had evacuated, leaving the denizens of the insane asylum to wander freely in the streets, shops, and homes. At one point after Plumpick arrived in the village, while fleeing the Germans, he masqueraded as an inmate. He sat next to a house of cards. When challenged by the soldiers, the first inmate introduced himself as the Duke of Clubs. So naturally Plumpick decided that he would be the King of Hearts. The mad folk immediately accepted him as royalty, waving hankies out the barred windows as he fled.
Racing about the streets like a rodent in a maze while endeavoring to evade the blood-thirsty Germans, Plumpick was knocked unconscious. Coming to he found himself wandering in a dazed dream of mirth and madness, for the inmates had assumed the identities of the missing populous--the cathouse was opened with aplomb and glee, one became the archbishop and another became the barber, and the shiny fire engine became a fun ride vehicle, with dozens of uniformed bogus fireman hanging from it. All the pouting, posing, prancing, postulating, pedantic raving and political machinations were accompanied by merrymaking music as some of them played fife, drum, and horns becoming a circus band. Each tableau and each little drama or comedic circumstance was underscored with carnivale tinkling as the masque's players performed their chosen roles. We watched while the spirit of Jacques Tati and the circus of Fellini showered us with absurdity and symbolism.
Death has no sting here amongst these Commedia pratfalls and fervent satire -yet the message is clarion; war is the dominion of dunces, as the silly characters play dolts and the soldiers, German, British, and French are presented as caustic idiotic cardboard caricatures. Still at the close of the tale, as protagonist Plumpick chooses fantasy over reality, we have to seriously question who were, and are, truly the madmen.
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