King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 6, 2018

There’s a certain subset of live theater fans to which I may or may not belong (okay, I belong) that finds an unabashed fascination in flop musicals. It’s an admittedly kind of odd interest that leads to speculation about everything from “what were they thinking?” exercises surrounding musical adaptations of films like Carrie (and, yes, there is one for those who are unaware, and it’s one of the most notorious flops of all) to “how could this possibly have failed?” ruminations about shows like 70, Girls, 70, a charming piece written by the Cabaret team of John Kander and Fred Ebb that was based on the play Breath of Spring. The play later became the well remembered British film Make Mine Mink, with all three versions featuring a cast of senior citizens who were slightly larcenous (but for good reason), and the musical debuted right at the height of the 1970s "nostalgia craze" that had seen shows like No, No Nanette and Follies feature stars of a bygone era (as 70, Girls, 70 did) and do considerable business. One of the other interesting 1970s era flops with a cinematic progenitor was 1978’s King of Hearts, a show which kind of limped into New York with the bad luck to open during a newspaper strike, though even word of mouth wasn’t especially strong about the show. That’s at least a little surprising, given that the book was by the redoubtable Joseph Stein, similarly responsible for the libretto of a little show called Fiddler on the Roof, and the music was by Peter Link, not exactly a Broadway legend, but a composer who had scored a significant success with a kind of Hair-esque musical called Salvation that had produced a Top 10 hit (an increasing rarity for a stage score in those days) in “If You Let Me Make Love to You, Then Why Can’t I Touch You?”. But perhaps even a cursory glance at Philippe de Broca’s 1966 film which gave birth to the musical may be enough to glean why a stage adaptation might have been problematic from the get go, even if certain elements of the film do in fact seem to be tailor made for people bursting into song or launching into a dance routine and the film's blatant theatricality seemingly similarly apt for a live theater adaptation. The film’s anti-war message might have been more at home during the era of Hair, in fact, rather than a decade or so later, but even given certain contextual issues, King of Hearts relies on a curious combination of whimsy and intimacy that even de Broca finds a bit difficult to sustain in the cloistered conditions of a feature film, and which simply may have been too precious to keep manifest on a large open stage.

In a way, King of Hearts bears at least some passing similarities to another infamous flop musical, the legendary (no, really) 1964 Stephen Sondheim outing Anyone Can Whistle, which featured an isolated town whose sole remaining business is the local insane asylum. Much as with King of Hearts, there’s an inherent dialectic informing the subtext of “who is crazy and who isn’t”, or perhaps more saliently what exactly “being crazy” actually means. King of Hearts throws this perhaps trite formulation into the context of World War I, however, with a Scottish soldier named Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) sent to investigate a town that has just been abandoned by the Germans, though the Germans have left behind a cache of explosives that is set to go off and (hopefully) do away with the Allied forces the Germans expect to move into the burg. Charles does get to the town, but all of the townspeople (who have found out about the coming conflagration) have left, and Charles almost instantly runs into some of the remaining German battalions. Through a comedy of errors, he takes refuge in the local insane asylum, and when some of the Germans shoot their way in to find him, they end up leaving everything unlocked, with the result being the town is then overtaken by the former denizens of the sanitarium.

There’s a perhaps needless insistence on allegory running throughout King of Hearts, especially when some of the vignettes presented are perfectly satisfactory on even a surface level. The film’s slightly surreal quality tends to make everything play like a combination of a fever dream and a live action Looney Tunes cartoon, which is what makes “little” moments like a disheveled inmate named Eva (Micheline Presle) making herself over into a kind of femme fatale unexpectedly moving. The film manages to evoke a variety of emotions with regard to the former denizens of the asylum, now out and about and assuming roles around the village. A romantic angle involving Charles and a kind of acrobat named Coquelicot (Genevieve Bujold) is expectedly sweet, but perhaps surprisingly doesn’t really tug at the heartstrings as strongly as some of the individual moments given to other “lunatics”.

King of Hearts was not especially well received during its initial release, and only attained its current cult status after years of Art House (and college) showings, where its cachet slowly grew over the years. The film’s deliberate whimsy is kind of difficult to accept at times, especially since it’s so obvious that de Broca (whom commentator Wade Major states isn’t exactly “subtle” in his presentational style) is trying to deliver a variety of messages. Still, the film has a very unique emotional component that’s hard to deny, and it’s elevated by some really winning performances by Bates, Bujold and a large, impressive cast of international character actors.

King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

King of Hearts is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Cohen is touting a new 4K restoration for this feature, and the results are expectedly excellent, with a viewing experience free of any distractions stemming from damage or age related wear and tear, and with a fine grain field that provides an organic appearance and which encounters no compression anomalies. The palette is nicely suffused, though I personally found it to be a trifle on the cool side at times, with a somewhat purplish tint to flesh tones. Still, detail levels are routinely impressive and de Broca's use of close-ups for faces tends to elevate fine detail levels as well. The outdoor scenes radiate a nice sense of natural light and (at times at least) some good depth of field. A few late moments feature either dimly lit or day for night sequences, and in these moments fine detail doesn't quite rise to the levels seen in the bulk of the presentation.

King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

King of Hearts features an LPCM 2.0 mono track that is largely in French (with forced English subtitles), with some passing dialogue in English. As Wade Major mentions in his enjoyable commentary, a lot of the film was dubbed since many of the actors didn't speak French, but de Broca was evidently a stickler for good post-looping, and so sync is rarely if ever as loose as is typically seen in many Italian films. Dialogue, effects and Georges Delerue's very expressive score are all presented cleanly and clearly, with no damage or distortion of any kind.

King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Length Audio Commentary by KPCC and DigiGods Critic Wade Major


• New Conversation - Genevieve Bujold and Indiewire's Anne Thompson (1080p; 14:25) is a fun sitdown with Bujold, who kind of looks like a holdover from the hippie sixties herself in this piece, with striking long hair and lots of jewelry.


• New Interview with Cinematographer Pierre Lhomme (1080p; 24:44) has some interesting biographical information as well as anecdotal information about the production. Lhomme speaks in English and can be just a little hard to understand at times.


• 2018 Re-Release Trailer (1080p; 2:15)


• French Re-Release Trailer (1080p; 4:56)

King of Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I may invite the umbrage of fans of this film, but I'm not quite sure King of Hearts is the unmitigated masterpiece some of its most ardent proponents insist it is. It's a sweet film, and one filled with some absolutely delicious performances, but I'm not quite sure it totally works as allegory or even as an organic narrative. The film is best in individual vignettes, where the variety of fantastic character actors de Broca assembled for the project get to strut their stuff in "smaller" scenes. The film's message is also probably too "obvious" to make some of the noisy and chaotic presentational aspects totally effective. All of that said, I adore this film for its simple goodness and for the genuine emotion it regularly evokes. Technical merits are excellent, and King of Hearts comes Recommended.