567 - The Pearls of the Crown, France, 1937. Dir. Sacha Guitry.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

567 - The Pearls of the Crown, France, 1937.  Dir. Sacha Guitry.

Sacha Guitry love stories.

And he is good-natured and witty in the telling of them.

In yesterday's film, The Story of a Cheat (1934), he played a man telling us the story of his own life, moving back and forth between the present and the past.

In today's film he uses a similar frametale.  He is a writer, Jean Martin, married to Francoise.  He has been doing research for his next book, and he has stumbled upon a wonderful story which he cannot wait to relay to his wife.  The story of the seven pearls.

So we see Jean and Francoise in the present, as he tells the story in French, and we see the characters in the past living out the story--in French, English, Italian, and "Abyssinian."

There are many characters, most from history, and the story covers a lot of territory, beginning with 1518 and moving to the present.

It begins in February of 1518 with the King of France, Francois I, talking to Lorenzo de Medici at Fontainebleau.  Francois I wants to thank de Medici for his patronage, so he offers him the hand of his niece in marriage.

His niece, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, will give birth to the Duchess, Caterina de Medici, but die in childbirth.  Her husband Lorenzo will also die, as he has grown terminally ill, just after having seen his baby daughter for the first time, but without knowing of the death of his wife Caterina.

Jean Martin says Lorenzo de Medici will be pleasantly surprised to meet his wife Madeleine when he arrives in heaven.

On the same day that Caterina de Medici is born in Italy, Henri, the Dauphin of France, is born in France.  The two children born in different countries on the same day will grow up to marry one another.

This marriage does not come easily, however, because Caterina is orphaned at birth, and Pope Clement VII sends her to be raised in a convent, intending that she will serve God as a nun throughout her life.

There is a side story, which appears to be included for the joy of telling it, showing it, costuming it, and playing it.

Three painters are painting portraits of two kings.  Jean Clouet is painting Francois I in France.  Hans Holbein is painting Henry VIII in England.  And Titian is painting Francois in Venice.  Since Francois I is in France, Clouet is able to paint him in person.  Since Titian is in Italy, he is painting Francois I from a medallion showing his face and a male body double standing in for his body.  Yes, they did that back then.

Jean Martin states that Titian's painting, without having Francois I present, is a truer image of him than Jean Clouet's painting, who has him present.

The story picks up with Henry VIII, and we go through his various wives.  Anne de Boleyn, for example, begins as an English tutor--making her a future Tudor tutor--to the Dauphin in France, and his father Francois I is enamored with her.  She is already scheduled to leave for the court of London, tomorrow; otherwise, it appears she would stay at the court of France and be wooed its more tender and romantic king.  Too bad, as Francois I seems to love her, whereas Henry VIII of England, well . . .

In London, Cardinal Wolsey disapproves of Henry VIII's interest in Anne Boleyn and says the Pope will never consent to a divorce, leading Henry VIII to sever ties with the Pope and "reform the Church."  He takes Anne Boleyn to meet his current wife, Catherine of Aragon, to get her opinion.

Jean Martin muses that it is odd that men show their mistresses to their wives to get their opinions, implying it is a custom, or was one.  He later states that men marry their mistresses when they are through with them, as it opens up a slot for a new mistress.  Cynical and sardonic Jean Martin.

Of course as soon as Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn he moves on to Jane Seymour, and Anne gets the executioner's hatchet to the neck.

As the Dauphin and Caterina come of age, an effort is made to get Pope Clement VII to grant freedom to Caterina to leave the convent so that she can marry.  However, at the same time, an Italian suitor named Spanelli has come on the scene.

In order to get rid of Spanelli, the Pope sends him around the world to find five pearls to match two that he already has.  The two are special and rare, and it will be difficult to find five that match.  Spanelli is to go anywhere and everywhere around the world, spend as much as necessary, and take all the time he needs.  Clement starts him on his journey with 1000 crowns.

We follow Spanelli to places such as the Persian Gulf and Abyssinia, and we watch as he cleverly finds pearls suitable enough to match the original two.  When Spanelli returns, the Pope is superficially delighted with his success but inwardly stunned that he succeeded.  He states that Spanelli must be tired from his travels, and he sends him away to rest, to "a very long rest."

So the five pearls are put together into a necklace and given to Caterina de Medici.

The pearls are passed down and make their way to Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scotland.  (She is not called Mary Queen of Scots in the movie.)  Mary must make her own trip to the executioner, and while he is lowering the axe, three times in expressionistic shadow on the wall, three bandits are raiding her possessions and make off with the seven pearls.  The leader of the thieves gets three pearls, and each of the other two get two.  The two are caught and arrested, and their four pearls are given to Queen Elizabeth I of England.  She hides them in a secret panel at the bottom of a jewelry box, where they remain hidden for 300 years.

Three hundred years later, Queen Victoria of England discovers the secret compartment in the bottom of the box, and she finds the pearls.  She calls for the crown to be brought to her, and she places the four pearls on the top of the British crown, "where they are today."

So the story of the four pearls has brought us from 1518 to the present, 1936.  But what about the other three pearls?

While in the present, we follow Jean and Francoise Martin as they decide to look for the remaining stories of the remaining three pearls.

Also in the present, in England, an attendant to the royal family tells the story, and in Italy, a chamberlain to the pope tells the story.  Each of them, along with Jean Martin, follows clues which lead him to an old restaurant with writing on the wall telling of a time in 1587 when the three thieves divided up their pearls at this very table.  The three men meet and discover their overlapping purposes, the Italian translating between the British and the French.  They each select a different pearl, separate, and plan to return to tell their respective tales.

(Speaking of translating, there is a gag in Abyssinia where four men create a chain of translators, each knowing two different languages that link together, in order for the first member of the chain to talk to the Queen.  It could have come straight out of Vaudeville or a 1950s television sit-com.  It becomes a game of Telephone as the original message gets slightly changed each time, so that at the end of the chain the Queen is enraged and sends them running.)

We go back to the 1500s and follow each of the three pearls and follow its trajectory, one being passed from grandmother to granddaughter over the generations (and we watch each generation with its distinct fashions), one gambled away, and the one the Martins trace.  One of them ends up on the forehead of a statue of Our Lady.  Another has a surprising fate.  And the Martins find the third one and bring the other two men on board to see it.

The film is visually spectacular and would be a production designer's and costume designer's dream.  The wardrobe alone--with specific adult and child (and infant), male and female, British, Italian, French, and "foreign" clothing from individual generations beginning with 1518 and distinguishing the various decades throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries is a tour de force.

One can imagine the costs, both of money and time, in making such a film.  Find a location; build the set; dress the set; costume the actors, including wigs; create a world specific to an individual year and country in history; film a few seconds of footage--maybe a minute or two--and then move on to the next one.  One after the other after the other.  The scene where the grandmothers are passing the pearl to their granddaughters, each in a different time period, is taking great delight with this idea, and in comedic ways.

The ending to the movie is a bit of disappointment today, as it is by now a cliche--fodder for a Twilight Zone episode--and could have been avoided, but it is in keeping with Sacha Guitry's personality and sense of humor, as well as the lighthearted cynical tone of the film.

The film would also be great to show in history classes, as it parades through the Tudors and the Stuarts and the Georgians and the Victorians and the Edwardians and a bit of the Windsors (paralleled with their equivalents in Italy and France).  While it takes tremendous historical liberties, one might find that to be part of the fun--having the students separate fact from fiction.  Since we are not in history class but merely watching a fictional film for pleasure, we will not be doing that.

We will be satisfied with Guitry's opening title card, presented as in a book:

SEE AND HEAR
THE AMAZING STORY OF SEVEN FINE PEARLS
RESEARCHED, WRITTEN, AND OFTEN JUST DREAMED UP
BY SACHA GUITRY.

We trust that he dreamed up a great deal of it.

And that is fine with us.