‘Le roi de coeur‘ starts from a formidable idea and ends up betting too much on it. In the filmography of director Philippe de Broca, the film occupies a special place, being considered one of his most ‘serious’ films in terms of message and compared to most of his other creations that aim for pure entertainment. The heroes in ‘Le roi de coeur‘ are either soldiers or patients in a madhouse. Soldiers, German and British or rather Scottish, butcher each other in the final months of the First World War. The asylum patients live with the nostalgia of a royal and princely past and become the masters of the city abandoned by the local population and by the retreating occupants. When the world is engulfed in madness, are not the diagnosed mentally ill more rational than those on the outside? What is sanity and where can it be found? ‘Le roi de coeur‘ approaches this theme in the context of an emphatic anti-war message. In the 60s the film enjoyed success and gained the status of a ‘cult film’. Some of the luster has started to fade over time, but what’s left is still pretty consistent and interesting.
The screenwriters do not hesitate to play with symbols as explicit as possible. The lead hero is an ornithologist soldier, who takes care of the pigeons of a Scottish regiment. Pigeons, which were to become a symbol of peace much later, were used during the First World War to transmit messages across enemy trenches. Private Charles Plumpick has the misfortune of being the only one in the regiment who speaks French and for this reason he is sent on an impossible mission to prevent the blowing up of the mined town by the retreating Germans. Arriving in the city and being chased by the Germans, he takes refuge in the mental health asylum where he declares himself to be the “King of Hearts”. When the mined town is deserted by both the Germans and the inhabitants, the lunatics come out of the asylum’s gates left open and take over it. They do it with charm and imagination, as only fools know how to do. They have the food, the drink and the clothing of the whole city at their disposal. The war from outside, however, will not let the colorful performance that seems to resemble a Fellini circus continue for a long time.
The metaphor behind the question ‘where is the real madness?’ works up to a point, but it can’t support an entire movie. ‘Le roi de coeur‘ looks very good visually. There is one formidable scene, that of the two regiments – British and German – entering and marching in the town square without noticing each other. Pure comedy, Philippe de Broca at his best. But the historical metaphor is too far from history. The characters, except for the main hero, lack any depth. The military – both German and English – are portrayed based on stereotypes. They look like in a vaudeville, their uniforms are impeccable and the music of the brass band and bagpipes is sounding loud even after more than four years of bloody war. Even the lunatics gallery fails to provide characters that are memorable or at least differentiated from each other in typology and character. Highly gifted actors like Pierre Brasseur or Jean-Claude Brialy get roles in which they are almost unrecognizable and which we immediately forget. Geneviève Bujold, in one of her first consistent roles, will perhaps be remembered only for her physical presence. The notable exception is Alan Bates, already a well-known actor when this movie was made, who creates a memorable role that is more sensible and luminous than most of his other screen appearances at the time. The image of the king crowned by the lunatics, reluctantly assuming the crown to discover little by little where the lesser madness can be found, is the one that sticks in the spectators’ memory, I believe.
The educated film fan has one more problem to face. It’s very hard to appreciate asylum movies after having watched ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘, which would be made nine years later. Any comparison is unfavorable. This also happens with ‘Le roi de coeur‘, which is perhaps not even the cult film it was considered for a while. And yet, there are many reasons why this film is still worth watching today.