Si yo fuera rey

Ronald Colman and Basil Rathbone, two wonderful actors having the time of their careers playing wittily written opposites who are also spiritual soulmates -- Francois Villon, the poetic rebel, born into poverty with a noble soul, and Louis XI, King of France, born into privilege but with a rebel's iconoclasm. Add a witty script by that poetic comedic rebel Preston Sturges, who hits all the crowd-pleasing buttons without condescension and no-nonsense direction by Frank Lloyd, and you have a top Hollywood product -- a crowd pleaser with intelligence.

Rathbone is a particular delight. Pre-Holmes, he revels in playing an unprepossessing cynic to whom everyone must bow because he happens to be the king. Colman is doing what he does best, playing an intelligent, superior man, without losing the common touch. A delight all the way around.

Ronald Colman gets his wish in "If I Were King," a 1938 film also starring Basil Rathbone and Francis Dee. Colman plays the vagabond poet Francois Villon, who is overheard by the disguised King (Basil Rathbone) criticizing His Highness and talking about what he would do if given the chance. He and his entire party are arrested, and Louis makes Villon the Lord High Chancellor. Villon gets to work immediately and elevates the king's reputation among the people. He opens up the stores of food at the palace and gives it to the citizens - they have no food because the city is being held by the Burgundians. The sentences he passes out to anyone arrested are merciful and fair. It seems as if he has succeeded. But what the King has failed to inform Villon is that he is only Chancellor for a week - and he has that week to convince the French army, who are refusing to fight the Burgundian army, to do so and win.

"If I Were King" is a great deal of fun, and Ronald Colman is delightful as Villon. But first, in response to a previous post, a word about accents. The previous poster asks if there was a vocal coach available, as there were people speaking in British and American accents - no French accents. Hollywood often confuses the accent issue of films set in foreign lands by casting one or two people who have some type of accent while the rest do not. The rule in acting is that no accent is necessary when doing a film or a play set in a foreign country. Why? Because the people of that country are not speaking English. They are speaking their own language. They are NOT walking around France speaking English with a French accent. This is why when actors perform Russian plays, or Hollywood did films set in Nazi Germany, Budapest, Spain or anywhere else, the actors did not have to use an accent of that country. An accent would only be necessary if a German were in America speaking English, for instance.

To get back to the cast, led by the wonderful Colman, Basil Rathbone is excellent as the hated Louis, and Frances Dee is lovely as Katherine de Vaucelles, who falls in love with the Lord High Chancellor.

Someone complained because Errol Flynn did not play this role. Flynn would have been marvelous, as he was a very charismatic actor, but I think Colman is marvelous. His Louis is not only energetic and charming, but highly intelligent, and Colman is able to shade the role in a way that Flynn, who tended to be much more superficial in his characterizations, could not.

An enchanting film, highly recommended.

If English Medieval history is unevenly shown in Hollywood films (see my comment on YOUNG BESS), French Medieval history is non-existant. The sole real centers of films on France from 1000 to 1500 are those dealing with Joan of Arc and those dealing with that contemporary pair of Louis XI (the "Spider King") and Francois Villon, the great vagabond poet. In short, the period of roughly 1429-1431 (with a brief look into the future, via George Bernard Shaw, into the 1450s), and 1471 - 1477). The rest of the fifteenth century is ignored. As for preceeding eras, BECKET, THE LION IN WINTER, and THE CRUSADES all deal with the tangle of French and English politics in the years 1160 - 1199, and the two films of HENRY V do deal with the invasion of France in 1415, and the battle of Agincourt (but no films about Crecy or Poitiers).

Louis XI was one of the most astute, crafty monarchs of France or any other nation in history. He is not a loveable figure (as his nickname of "Spider King" shows). But loveability was not a viable policy for any French monarch. England was a constant threat, even after the final defeat of the English in the Hundred Years War in the 1450s (long after Joan of Arc was burned). The monarchs would insist on keeping the Kingdom of France among their titles (after England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland) into the 18th Century. There were dynastic marriages between the Burgundian royal house (modern day Belgium and Holland and the Rhineland make up what was Burgundy) and the British. Louis had to constantly balance friendly relations with realism about British aims (and Burgundian aims for that matter). Things came to a head in 1470 when Phillip of Burgundy, a wise leader, died and his son Charles the Bold (more accurately "the Rash") became Prince of Burgundy. Because of certain French lands near Paris owned by the Burgundians, Charles was a subject of Louis. But Louis's government was poorer than Charles's and he kept toying with either breaking his liege position with Louis or seizing the French throne. This latter policy led to a series of wars, including a siege of Paris. Remarkably, due to superior leadership qualities, Louis beat Charles - or rather Charles beat himself. In 1477 Charles died in a battle against another target - the Swiss republics. Louis died in 1483, the first really great modern French monarch or leader.

He was suspicious, and ever ready to use torture. But given the general standards of his period (the same time as the Wars of the Roses, and of the likes of Cesare Borgia) his use of torture was actually consistant with his contemporaries. Louis popped up in other stories aside from IF I WERE KING - he was the king in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (in the 1939 film played, more kindly, by Walter Hampden). In a silent version of IF I WERE KING, BELOVED ROGUE (with John Barrymore as Villon)Conrad Veidt played him as more crafty and dangerous - and superstitious. He would also show up as the monarch fighting Charles the Rash in the film of QUENTIN DURWARD (after the novel of Sir Walter Scott) that starred Robert Taylor. In the present film he is played by Basil Rathbone, for once not tied down to sleuthing or to using a sword against Tyrone Power or Errol Flynn. He is able to demonstrate the frustration of a wise monarch, hampered by traitors and by a lack of popular support. The screenplay by Preston Sturges gives him some good lines of humor as well (he was a capable comic actor - see his pompous dried-out composer in RHTHYM ON THE RIVER, or even his greedy relative in WE'RE NO ANGELS). The make-up on his face makes his eyes look constantly rhumey and nearly unrecognizeable.

Villon is a great poet, of whom we know much but not enough. We don't know when he was born or when he died. We know he was a criminal (a thief and a murderer) but was able to avoid the scaffold - at least in known recorded history. In this film and BELOVED ROGUE he is forced to come to the aid of France, taking over the key job of High Constable (the previous High Constable, whom he killed, was a traitor to Louis). As this is a fiction, we are led to believe Villon manages within a week to instill spririt into the people of Paris, and to lead them to defeat the Burgundian army. Actually it was Louis who did that, with Charles's incomparably bad choices helping him. Still it makes a good story, and an enjoyable historical fantasy. The only thing missing is the Rudolph Friml score from Friml's operetta version, THE VAGABOND KING which did not appear until 1954 on screen. But even without that music it was enjoyable.

Francois Villon, born 1431 was all that If I Were King makes him out to be. Poet, satirist, duelist, and consorter with the rabble of low degree as Brian Hooker's lyric from The Vagabond King, he was all this. His satire brought him some big time trouble, a death sentence. But a last minute commutation by the monarch he satirized, brought him banishment in 1463. Villon went so far into obscurity that we do not know when he died after leaving Paris.

From these facts Justin Huntly McCarthy wrote a popular romantic play that premiered in 1901 and was later made into an operetta with score by Rudolf Friml and Brian Hooker. McCarthy took into account the politics of the time in medieval France. Louis XI was only King for two years, ascending the throne in 1461. The monarchy after leading France to an ultimate victory in the Hundred Years War against the English, was leader of a shattered land with many of the lesser lords quite a bit more powerful than the king. Chief among these in France at the time was the Duke of Burgundy. Whoever held that title ruled an area about a third of modern day France.

It's those Burgundians who have Paris surrounded and are dictating terms to Louis XI when the story opens. Villon and his sidekicks have broken into one of the King's warehouses and helped themselves to some food. Taking it back to the tavern owned by Robin Turgis, Villon makes a few choice comments about Louis XI. Unbeknownst to him, Louis himself is there on a mission to ferret out a traitor among his counselors. The traitor turns out to be the Constable of Paris. When a fight breaks out, Villon kills the constable.

This puts Louis in a dilemma as he sees it. Villon has killed a traitor, but he's insulted the person of the king. Since Villon brags about how much better a job he can do, Louis makes him Constable of Paris and gives him a noble title.

No man on the silver screen ever spoke the King's English better than Ronald Colman. I could listen to that man recite the Yellow Pages. He's a perfect Villon.

Basil Rathbone was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1938 for Louis XI. Louis XI was known as the spider king because the man was the craftiest of schemers. He usually had about 5 or 6 options given any situation, most of us are lucky if we have one alternative. Dealing from weakness as he was, he had to be a man of cunning, guile, and deception.

Interesting talking about the King's English when dealing with a pair of figures from medieval France. But the contrast between the romantic Villon and the crafty Louis is what drives the film. That and the partnership of necessity they form and the later grudging respect they develop for each other. Colman and Rathbone have the classical training needed to make If I Were King work.

The two main female characters acquit themselves well. Frances Dee as noblewoman Katherine DeVaucelles and Ellen Drew as the tragic Huguette are just fine. And among the supporting cast, I particularly like Sidney Toler as tavern owner Turgis. It's quite a contrast from playing Charlie Chan.

For me watching If I Were King is like watching The Vagabond King without the music since I know where the songs go. It's like watching a production of Pygmalion after seeing My Fair Lady. You keep waiting for the songs to start.

Particularly I listen for Colman to break into the Song of the Vagabonds as he rouses the citizens of Paris. It's a great moment in both the play and the musical.

You will thrill when you hear Colman rouse that rabble of low degree even if he doesn't sing.

"If I Were King" has a lot going for it. Based upon a 1901 play by Justin Huntly McCarthy that was subsequently transformed into a successful operetta by Rudolph Friml, the screenplay for this version was written by Preston Sturges. That means it includes a significant amount of Sturges' unique brand of sophisticated and sly wit. This was early in Sturges' career, before he emerged as a successful combination writer and director. Sturges' later films included such classics as "The Great McGinty", "Sullivan's Travels", "The Lady Eve", "The Palm Beach Story", "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "Unfaithfully Yours".

"If I Were King" also included superior performances by two great actors at the top of their game. Ronald Coleman was the perfect choice to play the swashbuckling poet-rogue, Francois Villon. For the benefit of those not familiar with French literature, Francois Villon really was a 15th Century French poet, he really did graduate from the Sorbonne and he really was a petty criminal who seems to have been constantly in trouble with the law. Born in Paris in 1431, Villon is described as having "disappeared from view" in 1463. To this day nobody really knows for sure what became of him, although the presumption is that he came to no good end. However, there is absolutely no evidence that he ever did anything even remotely heroic. Ronald Coleman possessed more than enough swashbuckling charm to carry the role, as well as the mellifluous voice to make the poetry work as few other actors, even in his day, could have done.

Usually known for playing either villains or Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, was given a rare opportunity to demonstrate his acting virtuosity by playing an aging King Louis IX; the clever, conniving and cynical French monarch who has become known to history as "Louis the Spider". At one point in the movie Preston Sturges has the King self-deprecatingly remark that, "The people of France already have one 'Saint Louis', another would only confuse them".