Review of Fanfan La Tulipe

Introduction

Fanfan La Tulipe was made in 1952 and very much set the tone for a period of swashbuckling adventures. The story is set during the reign (not the rein as the DVD cover would have it) of Louis XV (portrayed here as a slimy toad). Fanfan La Tulipe (Gerard Philipe) is a bit of a ladies man as well as being a swashbuckling hero. A fortune teller (the lovely Gina Lollobrigida - so good they named a lettuce after her, honestly) offers up a false prediction, and he believes that it is his destiny to marry the King`s daughter. But you just know that it`s going to lead to trouble and he might just end up with the fortune teller instead.

Christian-Jaque won Best Director at Cannes and the film won the Silver Bear at Berlin in 1952.

Video

A choice of 2 transfers here, both framed at 4:3. You can choose between a black and white version or a colourised version. The main technical difference between the two is just the obvious one - the colour. They are both remarkably lacking in dirt, dust and damage. There`s some grain around at times, but that`s mostly due to the film stock and its age. All in all I was pleasantly surprised at the look of a 50 year old film and the colourised version was very nice, not the garish mess that you sometimes see from colourisation.

Audio

A DD2.0 stereo soundtrack, which is the original mono soundtrack replayed over both channels. The soundtrack is all in French with optional English subtitles. This might be quite a good film for those of you learning French as the accents aren`t too thick and the delivery is much slower than most modern French cinema, allowing you to keep up with what`s going on without too much trouble if your French is a little rusty. You can always turn subtitles on to learn such gems as "hanging isn`t such a bad death" and "you have all the faults to obtain the vilest of honours".

There`s plenty of jaunty, swashbuckling orchestral incidental music to move the film along, as well as the obligatory buglist (this is about the army after all). Some of the sound effects are very cartoonish, which does make you laugh for the wrong reasons at times.

Features

Scratchy, scrappy trailers (most of which lack subtitles) for other DVD titles in the range (some of the trailers look like they were done by a teenager in their bedroom), simple text biographies and a photo gallery. There`s also a pamphlet in the case which gives more brief biographical details.

Conclusion

Not my choice of viewing really as I`m not one for 1950s French swashbucklers. It was ok to watch but I wouldn`t go out of my way to watch it again. It`s another of those films that I put in that category of "fills up daytime schedules in the Xmas holidays". The performances of the cast are reasonable enough, but you very quickly work out what`s going to happen and it`s all very predictable.

It`s sort of fun at times, but there just wasn`t enough to hold my interest. Recommended for fans of the film only!