Philippe de Broca © Alex Productions
King of Hearts: a cult film after its time
When King of Hearts was released in 1966, it bewildered many and flopped resoundingly. An old hand at adventure films, the director of Swords of Blood (Cartouche, 1962) and That Man from Rio (L’homme de Rio, 1964) caught audiences off-guard with his poetic, zany comedy that was ahead of its time and wouldn’t achieve cult status until a decade later. The Cinéma de la Plage makes the laughter in Philippe de Broca’s village of lunatics ring out with a restored version of the film.
The French director owes to the Americans the revival of King of Hearts, a sort of tenderly depicted Feast of Fools set in a village towards the end of the First World War. Viewers from across the Atlantic were won over by the tale of the nonconformist king (Alan Bates), a cousin of the Duke de Trèfle (Jean-Claude Brialy), who came to save the village from being blown up.
In an inspired piece of casting, General Géranium (Pierre Brasseur), Bishop Monseigneur Marguerite (Julien Guiomar), Madame Eglantine (Micheline Presle) and her pretty lodger, Madame Coquelicot (Geneviève Bujold), create a satirical, harebrained caper that charmed cinemagoers in the States with its wit for almost 10 years.
King of Hearts is Philippe de Broca’s eighth film and occupies a class of its own in his filmography.
4K restoration from the negative supervised by the cinematographer Pierre Lhomme at Technicolor Boulogne. Soon to be released in cinemas, on DVD and Blu-Ray.
