Le Roi de coeur (1966) - film review

October 1918.  With the allied forces sweeping across France, a German battalion is ordered to retreat from a rural French town.  Before doing so, they lay charges that will blow the town to Kingdom Come at midnight.  When he hears of this, a British general sends bird specialist Charles Plumpick to find the bomb and diffuse it.  When he arrives in the town, Plumpick is surprised to find it deserted: the inhabitants have fled for their lives, along with the German soldiers.  The only people he meets are the inmates of an asylum, who were left behind in the panic.  They welcome Plumpick as one of their own and leave the asylum to populate the empty town.  Dressing up in extravagant costumes, the mad folk celebrate their freedom and crown Plumpick their leader, the King of Hearts.  They even find a queen for him: the beautiful young acrobat Coquelicot.  Whilst all this is happening, Plumpick becomes increasingly anxious about the missing bomb and the impending explosion that threatens to atomise him and his new friends…

Le Roi de coeur is an amazing film, one of those rare fanciful comedies that dares to tackle a genuine social or political issue and makes its point with a simplicity that is totally effective.  This is clearly meant as an anti-war film, and, for all its exuberance and madcap silliness, a pretty effective one at that.  No wonder it was a great international success when it was first released in the mid 1960s.

At the time, war was very much in the minds of most people across the globe.  France was still licking its wounds after the costly Algerian conflict whilst America was up to its neck, and sinking ever deeper, in the folly that was Vietnam.  Both the Soviet Union and America were stockpiling weapons that could wipe out all life in the blink of an eye.  The spectre of Armageddon had never loomed so large.  You’d have to be living in a lunatic asylum not to be concerned by the way the world was heading.

One director who was affected by what he saw was Philippe de Broca.  In Le Roi de coeur, his most personal film, he manages to show the madness of war using some very simple ideas, making this one of the most significant anti-war films ever made.  The film’s key message is encapsulated in one short but brilliantly realised scene, in which platoons of German and Allied soldiers line up one opposite sides of a square and shoot each other dead.  This is all that war is about, ultimately.  Senseless slaughter ordered by idiot generals, the result being a road full of dead bodies.  As human activities go this is probably just about the most senseless.  Wisely, De Broca doesn’t milk the point with meaningless sentimentality.  There are no grand speeches, no fancy camera work.  Just a momentary break between one burst of comic excess and another.  But that’s all that is needed to make us stop, reflect and appreciate the futility of war.

The film’s most touching sequence is reserved for its final few minutes, in which the lovable hero Charles Plumpick (portrayed magnificently by Alan Bates) faces up to his situation and makes the decision to switch from one asylum to another.  It is a powerful moment and, again, one that is beautifully understated and hence very effective, its impact heightened by some of Georges Delerue’s most evocative music.

For its eccentricity and originality alone, Le Roi de coeur deserves to be considered one of Philippe de Broca’s best films.  Add to that its scintillating anti-war sub-text which is applied so sensitively and so intelligently and there can be no doubt that it is a major work from this director.   In contrast to many of De Broca’s films, where wild comic excess serves merely to satisfy an immediate need for distraction and entertainment, Le Roi de coeur is a soul-searing piece of humanist poetry that leaves a lasting impression.

© James Travers 2004

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