Sans peur et sans reproche (1988) - film review

In the late 1400s, King Charles VIII of France sends his armies to Italy to seize the kingdom of Naples.  One of the King’s most devoted captains is Bellabre, who is looking for an opportunity to redeem himself after being made a laughing stock in a jousting tournament by a common stable hand Pierre Terrail.   When he is rejected by his lover Blanche, the Duchesse de Savoie, Pierre enlists in the French army and finds himself under the command of Bellabre.  The latter intends to takes his revenge by exposing Pierre to the harsh realities of warfare, but only ends up suffering further humiliations when Pierre, having distinguished himself in combat, is knighted by the King.  When he tries to claim his beloved Blanche, Pierre, now popularly known as the Knight Without Fear and Beyond Reproach, discovers he has a dangerous rival in the scheming Scottomayor...

Having directed two modest but very well-received comedies - Pinot simple flic (1984) and Scout toujours... (1985) - Gérard Jugnot snatched up the gauntlet of an altogether more ambitious project - a lavish historical production recounting the exploits of the legendary 15th Century hero Chevalier de Bayard, a.k.a. le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche and le bon chevalier.   With a distinguished cast that includes Jugnot and most of his former comrades in arms from the celebrated comedy troupe l’Équipe du Splendid (including Josiane Balasko and Anémone), Sans peur et sans reproche offers not only the exceptional production values that we would expect of a French historical drama but an almost endless stream of gags, most of which are, predictably, in the worst possible taste.

The film’s desperate attempts to find humour in the grim realities of life in the Middle Ages (most of the jokes involve evisceration of one kind or another) make it resemble Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), although by being far more restrained in its use of anachronisms Jugnot’s film has a much greater sense of reality and is nothing like the escapist romp that the Python offering is.  It may not be as relentlessly funny as the Python film, but it at least bears some resemblance to historical fact and may even have you venturing into the history books or onto Wikipedia to find out more about the heroic Chevalier Bayard and check out how the affable King Charles VIII of France came to his sticky end.  Whilst it offers far fewer laughs than you would expect from Jugnot and his comedy cohorts, Sans peur et sans reproche works reasonably well as a grotesque parody of the classic historical epic, although those of a sensitive disposition should be advised that some of the humour is a little on the gruesome side, to put it mildly.  If you like sick humour French-style, this is where you will find it in gore-saturated, crot-encrusted abundance.

© James Travers 2011

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