Odelecol
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Joanna Mccarty
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
Cristal
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Mac McIlmoil
There have been many excellent anti-war movies but, to me, this one stands far out in front, largely for what it doesn't show, such as the horrors of war. Rather, King of Hearts points a finger at the insanity of war and gives us a laugh or two at the same time. A soldier more familiar with birds than explosives is sent into a village to search for a time bomb. He fines the regular residents gone and the village populated by escaped inmates of an insane asylum (though he doesn't realize this at once).So who is really crazy, the inmates inside the walls or the soldiers on the outside.That film credits list Alan Bates well below top billing though he is obviously the main character.Watch it and enjoy.
Polaris_DiB
Alan Bates plays Charles Plumpick, a Scot soldier during World War I who is sent into an abandoned French town to defuse an arsenal of bombs left by a retreating German army. When he gets there, he inadvertently lets loose the inmates of a local insane asylum, who coerce him into becoming their leader and take over the day-to-day aspects of the town. At first Charles is over-worried about the impending bomb explosion and taking control and securing this new populace, but after time he comes to enjoy these people's escapist mentality and eventually opts to join them for the long run.This film is a satire on society and the world around it, but beyond being so simply direct, it's also a lovingly choreographed ballad to escapism and fantastical reworking. "The only way to enjoy the world is to escape from it," says one of the inmates who repeatedly takes the place of Sage within the movie. One of the things that's important about what's going on in all of the spoofs of military actions and consequences is the fact that never do the inmates really seem that insane--only sometimes rhetorically absurd, like the populace of Wonderland or a good Jonathan Swift work. They know more about what's going on than they show, and one aspect of the ending is the idea that they may just have all decided to join the asylum willingly. I mean, why not? --PolarisDiB
pres10514
In 1967, my young husband and I blundered on this movie as part of a double feature. We were waiting to see the beginning of another movie that we had watched from the middle, having arrived late, as was customary at that time. As this masterpiece, unheralded to us, unfolded, we turned to each other in wonder. Later, we learned of its highly deserved cult status. I was unaware that the 60's were to be a golden age of cinema; one needs distance to appreciate this. Le Roi de Coeur is elegant, beautiful, visually charming, humorous, and finely acted. And in the service of a serious theme, as well. Most highly recommended, and far above current movie productions of any type.
vostf
Why did this movie flop the same way 'Bringing up Baby' did some thirty years earlier? Howard Hawks acknowledged that you can't have all the characters in a movie behaving foolishly. Foolish is funny when you are able to see at the same time what are normal people, i.e. you can't have a movie only with the Marx Bros. playing pranks on themselves. Name it comic discrepancy if you will.In The King of Hearts everything, everybody is supposed to be a comic character. The setup is already a carnival war before the lunatics are released in between. No question it is more difficult for a clown to be funny and steal the show if he goes on stage after another clown with the same kind of humor. So what? Director de Broca and his writer fumbled one interesting idea: a war satire with lunatics taking over Mankind's asylum. Remember that custard pie fight Kubrick eventually left on the editing floor for Dr Strangelove? Here we are desperately waiting for the images to be more than pretty: Alan Bates is handsome, Genevieve Bujold is beautiful and the whole cast is seemingly enjoying every bit of it. It might well have been a very funny shoot which is usually a sign the audience will get bored and here you do get bored as actors play for laughs and lines read for cleverness. From the very start the whole thing was way out of tune.
