Buckle My Swash!

I love a good swashbuckler - but they can be surprisingly hard to find. Just look at all the terrible pirate movies. Fanfan la Tulipe (1952), a classic French swashbuckler, is one of the good ones.

It starts with a sarcastic voice-over, explains that France was in the middle of a war that everyone was enjoying so much they kept it up for seven years. But as the dead soldiers began to outnumber the living, they had to start sending recruiters around the country. In one village, we meet young Fanfan, Gerard Philipe - caught in a haystack with a village girl. He playfully fights off the girl’s father and his pals, but is eventually overpowered. As they escort him to the church to marry the girl, a gypsy, Gina Lollabrigida, stops them to tell him his fortune. She says that he will be a great soldier and marry the King’s daughter. He is very taken with this prophecy and besides, enlisting will get him out of the marriage.

After he’s enlisted, he discovers that the “gypsy” is the recruiting sergeant’s daughter, and he’s not the first soldier who has fallen for her trick. But he is the kind of cocky guy that still believes that it is his destiny to marry the King’s daughter. And wouldn’t you know it, when he rushes to the rescue of a carriage beset by bandits, the passengers are the King’s daughter and Mme. Pompadour. Mme. Pompadour gives him a jeweled tulip brooch as a reward, and dubs him Fanfan le Tulip.

And so he goes along, flirting with Lollabrigida but planning to marry the princess. His army buddies are a fun crowd of character actors, including some billed as part of the Comedie Francais. There are fights and a duel, choreographed in the traditional swashbuckling manner. Fanfan has a way of doing something unmilitary, and defeating the enemy almost by accident.

But will he wind up with Lollabrigida or the King’s daughter? I won’t tell, but it does have a happy ending.

The charm of this movie is partly in the arch, droll writing, but mostly in Gerard Philipe’s boisterous character. Like Doug Fairbanks, he is always smiling, positive and energetic. Great fun.