Watch The Pearls of the Crown For Free

That was an excellent one.

An Exercise In Nonsense

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Unexceptional telling of the history behind the pearls on the crown of England. Most of the film is narrated from the present day in flashback, as three heads of state, form England, France and Italy, manipulate family marriages, have numerous affairs and resort to murder to advance their own selfish desires. The pearls frequently exchange hands during all of this, eventually some end up on the crown but three are stolen. Back in the present day, three men are determined to track down those three pearls, leading to more flashbacks. Characters come and go at a lightning pace throughout, we hardly get to know one of them before another group is introduced. As a result, it's hard to care about any of them. Only the present day characters have any kind of continuity, and they are a wealthy, shallow group, obsessed with finding the pearls for no reason other than to make a movie about it.

"The Pearls of the Crown" is a very frustrating movie to watch. It looks very nice--with lovely costumes, nice acting and some gorgeous sets. But, unfortunately, it comes across as a very bad history lesson--so jam-packed full of characters and events from the last five hundred years that it made my head reel--and I am a retired history teacher!Sacha Guitry was quite the auteur here--co-writing, directing and starring (in several roles) in this film. He was a talented man and did some lovely films. This, unfortunately, is not a particularly good one. The film is the history of a set of perfectly matched very large pear-shaped pearls. These pearls pass through LOTS of hands and the film is sure to show each and every one in a long, long series of vignettes. The first one is very long and well done--the other 3722348 are all too brief and hit you like an out of control freight train! All this is strung together with a plot of a man (Guitry) and two others who are in search of these illusive pearls. Even more episodic than "The Story of Mankind"--this one NEVER engaged me and only got worse as the film progressed. A clear misfire.By the way, get a load of the Abyssinian queen--she's some white lady covered in copious amounts of dark paint.

Sacha Guitry's movies probably don't show up in college courses on French film. But then again, neither, I suspect, do Marcel Pagnol's, which says a lot about such courses. This movie, Les perles de la couronne, is not a great movie, by a long shot. It is, however, an extremely funny one. It is a whirlwind tour of French history, and the characters going flying by, most without development or even much dialogue. Acting, except in a few magisterial cases (Raimu), is non-existent. What you do get is a brilliant narrative delivered by its brilliant author, Sacha Guitry. He is nothing to look at - though he was married to a succession of some of the most beautiful women in French theater and cinema - but he knows how to read his own words. Cynical to the extreme, but very funny.Other than that, most of the women in this movie are remarkably beautiful to look at.And you get to see Raimu in his heyday. What more could you ask, after you've worn out your copies of Marius, La femme du boulanger, La fille du puisetier, and the other masterpieces he made with Pagnol? This is basically an extremely funny history lesson, history as it should be taught but seldom is.Definitely a movie for everyone, including and maybe even especially for those who have been fed a dull diet of "important" French cinema. The camera work may be nothing to write home about here, but the narration is a stitch.

With only two comments on IMDb (and only one external review) I feel duty bound to chime in with a third to say that this is one of the perpetually delightful gems of cinema. A unique film: playful, fascinating, extravagant, hilarious, touching. Guitry is written off time and again as a mere purveyor of filmed theater, and it's true that he made many films -- about half of his output -- from stage plays, often long after their original stage productions. But once he got the cinema bug (he resisted for a very long time, only starting make films in middle age) he found that he was given a wonderful new toy, and continued to play with it for the rest of his days. The enormous cast, the huge number of extravagant sets, the lavish costumes, and the vivacious imagination with which all these are employed make of this charming film something to be treasured. I've seen it now four times -- I try to save it for moments when I really want something wonderful to savor. And let me not forget the beautiful and equally lavish musical score of Jean Francaix. The DVD is quite good, but you will of course have to have a region-free player -- and if you don't, why not? Available at this time only as one of the eight discs in a magnificent box set (with many extras) from Gaumont France, "Sacha Guitry: L'age d'or 1936-1938." It's well worth the price.