Les perles de la couronne

A delight! This is kind of the film I was hoping to see last year when I watched Guitry's Story of a Cheat, which I had heard about for years prior to its becoming available. I liked that film quite a bit, but there was a tinge of disappointment in that it didn't live up to my expectations. The Pearls of the Crown, though, was just brilliant. Guitry and his wife Jacqueline Delubac play multiple roles throughout a 400 year timespan. In the present they play a historian and his wife. Guitry is telling Delubac the story of the pearls in the crown of England. These pearls came from Mary Queen of Scots' necklace, which in turn came from a wedding gift to Catherine de Medici from the Pope. Guitry tells the story of the pearls' origin, and also of their theft the night Mary Stuart was executed. The four pearls that were recovered from the thieves went into the crown, and the three others were never found. Soon Guitry teams up with British and Italian counterparts and the three of them set out on a mission to find the remaining three pearls. This film moves back and forth through time with the grace of a ballerina. Arletty appears in one of the more outrageous bits of the film, as an Abyssinian queen (and, yes, she plays it in blackface).

Theatrical maestro Sacha Guitry goes through various wigs and false beards in this ornate romp through three languages and several centuries. Among the cameos by fellow theatrical luminaries Arletty wearing body makeup and very little else as the Queen of Abyssinia may offend modern 'Woke' sensibilities but she certainly keeps you awake!

Do you know who the granddaddy of the Monty Python was?Sacha Guitry is a serious contender."Les Perles de la couronne" was his biggest commercial success and it's still much fun to watch it today.

It was the first of the "historical" movies of the artist: "Si Paris m'était Conté " "Si Versailles m'était Conté " "En Remontant les Champs-Elysées " were to follow.

Guitry was French wit at its best .Only Henri Jeanson could write as good as he could .His is not a vitriolic style like his peer Jeanson,but a sense of humor completely mad which verges on absurd.

Tell me who could put in a two-hour movie FRancois Premier and Henry the Eighth,Mary Stuart and Catherine de Medicis,Henry the Fourth and the popes,Napoleon and JOsephine,Napoleon the Third and Eugenie de Montijo ,the queen of Abyssinia and Elizabeth the First, Madame du Barry and the Sans-Culottes ,a cuckold and a courtesan, three thieves ,one of them being good at maths and logic,Virgin Mary in the flesh (two divine interventions),and more and more and more....??? Madness is everywhere and critic George Sadoul who would dismiss Guitry as "filmed stage production maker" and "as a man contemplating his navel ,if he were here today,should see his objections swept away in a deluge of joyful film making ,which only the snobs will not hear and only the deaf and the blind will not acknowledge.

The extraordinary quality of the screenplay -which is very complicated ,Guitry really invented here the Film à Tiroirs- is one of simple happiness.You should see Ann Boleyn(sic) teach King François's son the indicative present of the verb "to have" (and the obsolete form "thou hast" )."I need an English teacher too,the king says ,would you be my mistress?".This is a film that should be watched in French with English subtitles to enjoy the word games the puns and the gags which show at every minute .

About King Henry the Eighth:"He protested ,he protested ,he protested so much that he became a Protestant!".

The film is marvelously constructed;Sheherazade could not do better even if she tried her best: Once there was a pope who wanted to get rid of his dear niece Catherine's gallant .He had two invaluable pearls so he asked the young man for five more pearls which he would find around the world: around the world in eighty days or more.The Queen of Abyssinia sequence alone is worth the price of admission.Arletty ,with soot or paint smeared all over her face ,can only speak Abyssinian! So it takes three interprets (English,Italian,French ) to translate the sovereign's mumbo jumbo! When the lad came back,the seven pearls were given as a wedding present to Catherine de Medicis.Four pearls ,through the years ,were preserved,but three of them were stolen.Guitry goes backwards and forwards between the present and the past,with absolute virtuosity.And he even manages to make a "poetic" ending : the last pearl gets back to where it once belonged in a way...

Vive Sacha Guitry!

Sacha Guitry's movies probably don't show up in college courses on French film. But then again, neither, I suspect, do Marcel Pagnol's, which says a lot about such courses. This movie, Les perles de la couronne, is not a great movie, by a long shot. It is, however, an extremely funny one. It is a whirlwind tour of French history, and the characters going flying by, most without development or even much dialogue. Acting, except in a few magisterial cases (Raimu), is non-existent. What you do get is a brilliant narrative delivered by its brilliant author, Sacha Guitry. He is nothing to look at - though he was married to a succession of some of the most beautiful women in French theater and cinema - but he knows how to read his own words. Cynical to the extreme, but very funny.

Other than that, most of the women in this movie are remarkably beautiful to look at.

And you get to see Raimu in his heyday. What more could you ask, after you've worn out your copies of Marius, La femme du boulanger, La fille du puisetier, and the other masterpieces he made with Pagnol? This is basically an extremely funny history lesson, history as it should be taught but seldom is.

Definitely a movie for everyone, including and maybe even especially for those who have been fed a dull diet of "important" French cinema. The camera work may be nothing to write home about here, but the narration is a stitch.

In the end, The Pearls Of the Crown is about political gains and advantage, royalty and succession, love and heartbreak, and life and death; with the main story that connects all the dots being the origin of the seven pearls.

Basically four of the pearls rest on the English Crown, and a writer recounts to his wife how there were originally seven pearls, all of identical shape, color and weight, but 3 of them are considered missing and to understand the value and importance of these pearls a history lesson is in order. In the meantime, representatives from France and Italy are also interested in the missing pearls. By fate, the writer and these representatives manage to form a bond and make it a mission for each individual to locate a missing pearl. This is what happens in present time, but the true main story is the pearls.

Sasha Guitry and his team create a fascinating and original story that literally spans generations and involve a bevy of characters. In fact, the director who stars and many of the actors and actresses play multiple roles. The main story of the pearls is truly epic and keeps things interesting. The main fault to me is being able to keep up with that main story. Its challenging, things fast forward in the story at a lightning quick pace and characters come and go in the blink of an eye, and events and circumstance mixed in can leave you in the dust if you suddenly lost attention. It was also purposely made to appeal to both audiences who speak English, French and Italian as it shifts frequently back and forth and sometimes all at the same moment in each language.

So I would say watch it for the story alone, its unique and ambitious. Its not for all tastes for sure but its a nicely made and well acted movie.