Ruy Blas

Directed by Pierre Billon,but actually Cocteau's touch can be felt here there and everywhere.Cocteau had always loved to adapt great lit classics:"l'éternel retour" was a modern transcription of "Tristan and Iseut";"Beauty and the Beast" ,his masterpiece,tackled Madame Leprince de Beaumont's fairy-tale;Later Madame de la Fayette's "la princesse de Clèves" was brought to the screen .Here Victor Hugo's "Ruy Blas".Jean Marais is ideal as the romantic hero,and he forms with Danielle Darrieux a couple the crowds could easily dream of.That kind of queen-and-jack couple,we will find it again in "l'aigle à deux têtes",except that the jack has been replaced by an anarchist,but that does not make a big difference when you're depicting romantic passion.The setting in the palace are as extravagant as in any of other Cocteau creations.Billon ,avoiding filmed stage production style,gets his camera out of it and achieves good location shots in the torrent.Jean Marais plays two roles like in "Beauty and the beast",but his part of a brigand who resembles the student/jack like a brother is not as convincing.

Pierre Billon was an underrated director who did a much better job with his Balzac adaptation "Vautrin" than with this Hugo attempt and though Jean Marais was hugely popular I find his speaking voice grating and here we have to listen to him talk twice as he plays a dual role. Cocteau the scenarist had called this a kind of Western with Marais as the dashing outlaw in the mountains though it is to me more of a swashbuckler. The always attractive Darrieux helps things as the Queen though she doesn't turn up until 30 minutes into the story. There is good support from Gabrielle Dorziat as her Lady In Waiting (" Une reine d'Espagne ne regarde pas per la fenetre") though another French character player Marcel Herrand overacts as Don Salluste, the chief of police who seeks vengeance against the outlaw and later blackmails Darrieux into giving up the throne to avoid the scandal of her being associated with Marais. Elaborate sets by Georges Wahkevtch and some nice lighting by Michel Kelber.

There are oddities about RUY BLAS. The strangest aspect of all is that the tale was written by one of France's greatest writers, Victor Hugo, but it is about the court of traditional foe Spain.

The equally odd love tale sees the Spanish queen (played by the beautiful Danielle Darrieux) fall in love with, and kiss, Jean Marais, a kind of D'Artagnan (minus the swashbuckling prowess), of modest background who rises through the ranks to court general secretary thanks to the queen's favor and at the expense of a lookalike duke. The latter goes to jail in the wake of machinations by some unsavoury characters in the Spanish court.

The story is somewhat reminiscent of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (US 1937), the ending recalls ROMEO AND JULIET, and there is something Errol Flynn/ SEA HAWK-like about Jean Marais' role as the jailed duke.

Although Pierre Billon is the film's official director, there is no doubt that Jean Cocteau (then Marais' lover) was highly influential, especially over the photography, which keeps highlighting Marais' physical beauty, to the very final shot, often in a manner reminiscent of LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE.

An interesting aside is that Marais, as court secretary, conveys his Spanish fervor by regretting the loss of Portugal and Brazil. Well, I beg to differ. Thank God for the existence of those two Portuguese-speaking countries. And it is also odd, if not downright curious that Hugo, as a French national, should wish that one of his country's main foes (Spain) should control territories that France, too, tried to conquer on various occasions.

Ultimately, this is a watchable flick, but of little historical import, and not much in terms of acting, direction or script.