A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, March 16, 2020

The Pearls of the Crown (Sacha Guitry, 1937)

Arletty and Claude Dauphin in The Pearls of the Crown
Cast: Sacha Guitry, Jacqueline Delubac, Lyn Harding, Renée Saint-Cyr, Enrico Glori, Ermete Zacconi, Barbara Shaw, Marguerite Moreno, Arletty, Marcel Dalio, Claude Dauphin, Raimu, Jean-Louis Barrault. Screenplay: Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jaque. Cinematography: Jules Kruger. Art direction: Jean Perrier. Film editing: William Barache, Myriam Borsoutsky. Music: Jean Françaix.

Sacha Guitry's The Pearls of the Crown is a romp through French and English history that tells the story of how four pearls came to be placed on the royal crown of Great Britain -- and what happened to three other similar pearls that didn't make it. It purports (with tongue in cheek) to be a true story, and it gives Guitry a chance to play four distinct roles, including Francis I and Napoleon III. It also features cameos by some celebrated French actors, including Arletty in blackface as the queen of Abyssinia, Claude Dauphin as her pearl-hunting lover, Jean-Louis Barrault as the young Napoleon I, and Raimu as the owner of one of the three missing pearls. Guitry's wife and frequent co-star, Jacqueline Delubac, plays a key role as the wife of the chief pearl-hunter, Jean Martin (Guitry), as well as bits as Mary Stuart and Josephine de Beauharnais. It's made in three languages -- four if you count the gibberish spoken by the queen of Abyssinia and her courtiers -- but mostly in French. Engaging enough, though you may want to bone up on French and English history to get the full value.
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