King of Hearts (1966)

The message is clear enough: war is craziness, as we contrast the lunatics from the local insane asylum from what the warring armies do. Soldiers kill each other, the private sent to the town is supposed to defuse the bomb the retreating Germans had planted to destroy the town, and near the end, the Allied armies change their plans and want to destroy the town with the Germans about to come back.The movie is purposefully highly stylized: the village is pretty, and the lunatics doll themselves up as they enter the abandoned town. Even the soldiers are shockingly clean for wartime armies.And that is the whole problem with the movie. It's too clean and pretty. A town that has just been abandoned by a retreating occupying army would certainly be a mess, but in the movie it looks pristine. Also, as the movie takes place late in World War One, everyone, especially the Germans, were quite exhausted with dwindling food and other supplies. (Armored cars-as opposed to tracked vehicles-were hardly used on the Western Front at this stage of the war either.) The lunatics are too clean as well-and too similar. There are many different kinds of mental illness, including those that require people to be institutionalized. Yet the lunatics all act much the same way, like playful children who have little perception of what is going around them. Some lunatics may be like that, but others have much different symptoms, such as usually acting perfectly normal but having intermittent severe episodes.This may be an antiwar movie, but it's too clean and stylish to be anything more than a confection.

Anti-war comedy that takes place in 1918 during World War 1 in France. Private Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) is sent to a small French town to dismantle a bomb that the Germans put there. Unknown to him the residents of the town have all left and the insane asylum has been left wide open. The inmates take over the town and Plumpick can't figure out why people are acting so strangely.This was ignored when it came out in 1966 but acquired a cult following soon after. The movies message is VERY anti-war and college students responded to it (the Vietnam war was in full swing when this came out). At one theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Central Square Theatre) it played for 5 YEARS with college students seeing it again and again. I was only a kid when this came out and didn't catch it until the 1980s when I was in college. Brattle Theatre (also in Cambridge) played it quite a bit with another college cult movie "Harold and Maude" and I saw it every time it played (which was quite often).While I don't disagree that the movie is simplistic and VERY dated I still loved it! The humor in this comes mostly from the antics of the inmates but also shows the German and British armies as being run by total idiots. The humor is not in your face--it's very gentle and sweet but works. The anti-war message is subtle but I think it's easy enough for anyone to get. The acting was good by the whole cast--especially Bates (his reactions to the antics of the inmates is priceless). Supposedly most of the people reviewing this who loved it saw it as children in the 1960s and have fond memories of it. Younger reviewers seem to hate it. Well I didn't see it till I was in college and loved it! Not for everybody but for those who like off beat foreign movies this will be a treat! I give it an 8.

some here may say this film is outdated.but the story and its telling are superb.the subtleties, the wry humor, cinematography, acting are all great.genevieve bujold is gorgeous and moving.alan bates an excellent pick for the lead.the twists of plot and irony of war and the insane asylum as metaphor all mesh perfectly.there are many fine qualities in this film that will never be outdated.i suggest there's even an undertone related to the Vietnamese conflict raging in the year this was made.a must-see!

One of greatest movies of all time, it is charming and sweet, funny and romantic. It is a unique film that at once captures the best of humanity and the folly of war. Set in a small town in World War I France, it has a crazy premise that works because the film is true to that premise to the very end. Everything about it is superb: the acting, the direction, the writing, the score, the cinematography. Alan Bates and Genevieve Bujold are perfectly cast in the lead, but the entire cast is great. The music is beautiful. The ending is brilliant.If you rent it, be sure you get the subtitled version. It is in three languages (French, English, German), and the dubbed version loses a lot.