King Of Hearts
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Bates, Jackie Blanchot, Jacques Balutin, Pierre Brasseur, Robert BlomeBrand: BATES,ALAN
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of King Of Hearts
Movie Review: The madness and madcap-ness of war
Summary: 4 Stars
The madness of war makes the members of the asylum seem sane. Such is the theme of this anti-war comedy directed by France's Philippe de Broca, starring the English actor Alan Bates wearing a jaunty crown, and featuring a young and delectable Genevieve Bujold in a yellow tutu.
She's insane. A virgin who believes she's a prostitute. Her madame is also insane, or so the townsmen of Marville believe. But theirs is such a pleasant insanity that we in the audience are persuaded to ask what is sanity and who needs it? Can nerve gas and rat-infested trenches with bloated, rotting bodies be sane?
But hold on there, that last sentence better describes some other anti-war movies from the time of The Great War, perhaps "All Quiet on the Western Front" or Kubrick's "Paths of Glory." Here the tone is light, the treatment burlesque, the plot absurdly amusing.
Bates plays Private Charles Plumpick (in Scottish kilt) a keeper of messenger pigeons who has "volunteered" to find and defuse a bomb left in Marville by the retreating Jerrys. It's set to go off at the stroke of midnight. The townspeople learn of the bomb and desert the town, leaving the inmates at the sanitarium and the circus animals to fend for themselves. So when Plumpick arrives he finds only a detachment of Germans who spot him and chase him into the asylum. Inside as cover he joins a game of cards with two of the inmates. The Jerrys confront the inmates who identify themselves in absurd ways. Plumpick, with some on the spot inspiration, calls himself "the king of hearts."
And so we have our premise. When the Jerrys retreat to the countryside to await the explosion, and while the English watch for the return of one of Plumpick's pigeons with news that the bomb has been defused, the inmates stream out of the asylum. They take over the town, dressing up in various costumes: this one becomes the mayor, another the priest, and little Mademoiselle "Poppy" (Bujold) awaits her first trick.
This the kind of movie that Monty Python fans would adore, and I suspect it had some effect on the directorial style of Terry Gilliam.
Anyway I wrote a little ditty to anticipate the ending (BEWARE SPOILER!):
I'll have no more of war
Such a craven whore!
I will to the asylum go
To be my true love's beau.
Summary of King Of Hearts
This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by its residents in the face of oncoming combat. Instead, the town is populated by the residents of a nearby insane asylum, whose keepers have fled--a fact that escapes the innocent soldier, who assumes these are the regular folks. A film that celebrates the innocence and wisdom of the insane, even as it questions who the real madmen are. --Marshall FineA Scottish soldier is sent to disarm a bomb in a French village that has been evacuated except for the inmates of an insane asylum. He doesn't realize that all his new friends are mentally unstable until he is crowned King.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD
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