Inventive & freewheeling, a typically enchanting historical vaudeville from French hyphenate supreme, actor-writer-director-producer Sacha Guitry. This one all about the peregrinations of seven matched mega-pearls as they fall in & out of various royal hands after being found in the 1500s. Four will eventually sit atop the British Crown, but three others will go missing. Guitry, figuratively working without a net, jumps from one century & country to another, between different courts & royal households, looking high life & low, over three languages (not including Abyssinian gibberish), bypassing formal technique for offhand leaps in logic, language & linear continuity. Yet never causing a moment of confusion in the fast-paced action (and talk!), assisted by an easy to identify, all-star cast which helps to keep things straight. Look for a couple of especially wild turns from Arletty & Dalio in absurd Abyssinian BlackFace, too silly to be off-putting. (You may not think so, hence BLACKFACE Warning!!) Structurally, the first half collects all the precious jewels; the second, largely contemporary has a Brit, a Frenchmen (Guitry in one of his many roles) and an Italian tracking down the three missing pearls. Sophisticated, silly sui generis fun.
DOUBLE-BILL: When required, Guitry could hold to regular dramatic rules & tactics (in essence a man of the theatre) as in his masterful LA POISON/’51 with shaggy Michel Simon as a henpecked husband out to murder his wife . . . before she murders him.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Entertaining, plus a bonus in some none too shabby history as part of the mix.
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