La Fayette

For some incredible, God only knows, what reason this film has not been shown for years. I saw it in theaters as a kid and later a few more times on television in the Sixties and it disappeared after that. I think it would be worthwhile to get out on DVD and Blu-Ray if for no other reason than for American kids to know why so many public schools are named after this French guy.

Lafayette has become the symbol of Franco-American comity and as we know our relationship with France has not always been easy. In fact when the French recognized the American colonies as independent they sent any number of people here officially and unofficially as the American Revolution became a European War as well with world wide theaters.

What was different about the Marquis de Lafayette was that he was an idealist and really bought into all the ideas of our Revolution. Folks like General Rochambeau and Admiral DeGrasse were rather haughty in dealing with us colonials, Lafayette never so. In fact the way he adopted the childless George Washington as a father figure was one of the great stories coming out of the American Revolution.

Michel Royer was a spirited Lafayette, he was a name unknown to Americans, but had a substantial career in French cinema after this. You'll see a number of familiar names dotting the cast, but the two that stand out are Howard St. John as George Washington and Jack Hawkins as British General Charles Cornwallis. Each perfectly fit my conception of both men. And St. John's scenes with Royer are special.

Hopefully this will get out on DVD and soon.

..or La Fayette ,the French spelling.The first thing to bear in mind is that ,at the time,it was the biggest budget France had ever spent for a movie:hence the cast which includes Orson Welles as Franklin -a part he had already played in Sacha Guitry's "si Versailles m'était conté"-,Vittorio DeSica ,Jack Hawkins ,Edmund Purdom ,Liselotte Pulver;on the other hand,the French stars are not big names :Pascale Audret and Michel LeRoyer were far from being very famous compared with Bardot,Delon,Belmondo,Ventura or Moreau.Other assets were Claude Renoir's peerless cinematography and a lilting tuneful score .

But the harsh truth is that Dreville's epic is virtually forgotten in today's French collective memory:it has completely disappeared from dictionaries of films even the ones which feature the worst bombs though.And it's certainly unfair.Michel Dreville has never been an unrecognized genius as his earlier works testify:melodrama -the priceless weepie "la cage aux rossignols"-,biographies- "horizons sans fin" about female pilot Hélène Boucher-,Alexandre Dumas -the first version of "la reine Margot ,which ,despite of Jeanne Moreau ,is inferior to Chereau's remake with Isabelle Adjani.As for his comedies ("les sept péchés capitaux"," à pied ,à cheval ou en spoutnik" ),since we cannot say something nice.His best works are probably "copie conforme" ,thanks to Louis Jouvet, an actor so great any movie he makes cannot be bad,and this "Lafayette".

"Lafayette' is not really a biography for Lafayette's story is far from being over after his American adventure:he played a prominent part in the French revolution and even during the Restoration.Michel Le Royer is well cast as the lead:he has youth,panache and enthusiasm going for him and he's credible -it was a hard task because the marquis was barely twenty -:he embodies the end of the courtier,as Louis the Fourteenth wanted the noble to be:the scene with Monsieur ,the king's brother is revealing.Lafayette was ahead of his time, a visionary who had read the philosophers and who felt things were about to change:"now liberty has a home" he says ,on his way back to France.He could have added " and its home is not mine".

First part takes place in France ,after a short prologue which shows Brave New World's plight;the second one makes good use of the cinemascope for the battles scene.The dialogue is above average .Besides,the director displays respect for the audience :the American and English speak English -there are a lot of subtitles-,and the French French,which,at the time was not that much obvious.Even Lafayette tries his hand at English with a funny accent.And unlike "the patriot" ,in Dreville's movie,the English are not sadistic brutes and nasty executioners

Historians are going to say that,for instance, Marie -Antoinette and Lafayette ,were not as thick as thieves ,and that the queen called the New World hero "Monsieur Blondinet" (=fair-haired boy,meant pejoratively).These are minor quibbles."La fayette" is not a masterpiece,but it's pretty entertaining .

I also wonder why this has not been released on VHS or DVD. I saw the film as a young pup before it was released, chosen by our adviser to attend an advanced screening of it for New York City area high school papers, for our paper. We even had Howard St John at the screening, and we were able to interview him. Honestly, however, at that young age I really couldn't form an opinion on the film's worth, but I do remember that visually it was a good-looking film, and to my untrained eye I thought the acting was good, and basically made those points in my review at the time. I would be very interested in seeing it again, to see if it was as good as I thought it was.

The correct title should be Lafayete in the American Revolution. Lafayette was to have a second career in democratic revolutions in his own country. Yet as a story about the famous Franco-American hero in the american revolution, the story is excellent

The American revolution is an underrated subject in the American theatre. Regrettably the cause of liberty was allowed to slip to the french.

The film does have an important error in recording the Yorktown surrender which was France's only moment of glory on over 500 years of fighting the English.