According to the IMDb cast list Sacha Guitry plays one role, a schoolmaster, in this movie. According to my eyes he plays at least three other roles. What can I tell you. Pedants will question the fact that 1) a math teacher decides to regale his class with a history lesson and 2) that a class in any school anywhere on earth would last so long. My advice? Don't listen to them, enjoy Guitry doing what he does best, entertain. As I've had occasion to note elsewhere for a man of the theatre Guitry was very cinematic and like another man of the theatre, Noel Coward, he was also patriotic which was quite a trick given his Russian roots. Here he unspools some droll anecdotes stretching back a couple of hundred years or so and wraps it up neatly. More I cannot wish you.
5 Reviews
Elysees fields forever!
dbdumonteil9 July 2008
Let Guitry take you down cause he's going to...Elysées fields ...where nothing is real (isn't it?)and nothing to get hung about ..
Champs Elysées forever!
This movie belongs to Guitry's historical movies ;such works include "les Perles de la Couronne " (1937) and the two magnus opus "Si Versailles M'Etait Conté "(1953) and "Si Paris Nous Etait Conté "(1955);there were three more movies but they were minor ("le Mot De Cambronne") or academic ("Napoleon" ).As for " De Jeanne D'Arc à Petain",made during the occupation days (1942) let's draw a veil over it,if only out of respect for the artist and let's remember his very first film "Ceux De Chez Nous " ,the true granddaddy of all Guitry's historical extravaganzas.
"Remontons les Champs Elysées " fills its quota of puns,gags and hilarious situations as well as useful "inventions ":the 2-person guillotine Marat is very interested in is not the least.
IT all began under Marie de Medicis's regency when Concini (a nasty Italian:why ,complains Guitry ,do French always choose treacherous aliens to rule ?)was the real master:les Champs Elysees were then just a large path through the wood where young Louis 13th ,sick and tired of his minister ,achieved a right and left:a boar and the infamous wop.
May this movie be the director's claim for immortality?the story is told by a schoolteacher (Guitry who plays other parts)in front of his pupils :one of them is his own son,and he's the son of the kings ,of Napoleon and of the Republic !How Guitry succeeds in proving such a far-fetched story is his secret !A transparent metaphor for the French citizen as he is today?Or the artist's desire longing for immortality?
But Guitry has a darker side to him:the fear of death .One of the segments is revealing:a two-bit fortune teller told the king Louis 15th he would die six months after the marquis de Chauvelin ; so the monarch sends all his sawbones to the noble man to take care of his health ;he puts him on a diet because "if you die,my own days will be numbered".there's also this obsession of dying when you are 64: "when you are 20,and you know you're going to die when you're sixty-four,you've got plenty of time;but when you turn sixty-three ,you are not smiling anymore" .This obsession with death was even more obvious in the two final historical works :the best segment of "Si Versailles ...." deals with the final years of the Sun King,growing old along Madame De Maintenon;as for "Si Paris....",it shows many old people,among them Voltaire dying...
Guitry opened up in his movies: proof positive he was a genuine artist.
Champs Elysées forever!
This movie belongs to Guitry's historical movies ;such works include "les Perles de la Couronne " (1937) and the two magnus opus "Si Versailles M'Etait Conté "(1953) and "Si Paris Nous Etait Conté "(1955);there were three more movies but they were minor ("le Mot De Cambronne") or academic ("Napoleon" ).As for " De Jeanne D'Arc à Petain",made during the occupation days (1942) let's draw a veil over it,if only out of respect for the artist and let's remember his very first film "Ceux De Chez Nous " ,the true granddaddy of all Guitry's historical extravaganzas.
"Remontons les Champs Elysées " fills its quota of puns,gags and hilarious situations as well as useful "inventions ":the 2-person guillotine Marat is very interested in is not the least.
IT all began under Marie de Medicis's regency when Concini (a nasty Italian:why ,complains Guitry ,do French always choose treacherous aliens to rule ?)was the real master:les Champs Elysees were then just a large path through the wood where young Louis 13th ,sick and tired of his minister ,achieved a right and left:a boar and the infamous wop.
May this movie be the director's claim for immortality?the story is told by a schoolteacher (Guitry who plays other parts)in front of his pupils :one of them is his own son,and he's the son of the kings ,of Napoleon and of the Republic !How Guitry succeeds in proving such a far-fetched story is his secret !A transparent metaphor for the French citizen as he is today?Or the artist's desire longing for immortality?
But Guitry has a darker side to him:the fear of death .One of the segments is revealing:a two-bit fortune teller told the king Louis 15th he would die six months after the marquis de Chauvelin ; so the monarch sends all his sawbones to the noble man to take care of his health ;he puts him on a diet because "if you die,my own days will be numbered".there's also this obsession of dying when you are 64: "when you are 20,and you know you're going to die when you're sixty-four,you've got plenty of time;but when you turn sixty-three ,you are not smiling anymore" .This obsession with death was even more obvious in the two final historical works :the best segment of "Si Versailles ...." deals with the final years of the Sun King,growing old along Madame De Maintenon;as for "Si Paris....",it shows many old people,among them Voltaire dying...
Guitry opened up in his movies: proof positive he was a genuine artist.
Guitry's History Lesson
MogwaiMovieReviews30 October 2018
A maths professor decides to take the morning off and instead teach his students the history of France's most famous avenue.
"Let's Take The Champs-Élysées" is a pleasant enough romantic and flag-waving whimsy, but it's a little aimless, and early on quite dull. Its interest and worth will probably depend upon how curious one is about the individual historical stories Guitry recounts, as the tales go by so fast there's little time to invest in any of the characters. The best by far is the one with Guitry himself as Louis XV, but the rest by and large end up diverting enough.
The film improves as it goes on, but it still remains something of a disappointment, all in all. Handsome to look at, though.
"Let's Take The Champs-Élysées" is a pleasant enough romantic and flag-waving whimsy, but it's a little aimless, and early on quite dull. Its interest and worth will probably depend upon how curious one is about the individual historical stories Guitry recounts, as the tales go by so fast there's little time to invest in any of the characters. The best by far is the one with Guitry himself as Louis XV, but the rest by and large end up diverting enough.
The film improves as it goes on, but it still remains something of a disappointment, all in all. Handsome to look at, though.
History of the Champs-Élysées.
morrison-dylan-fan20 April 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Entering the last stage of the ICM French film challenge I started gathering up titles to view. Recently viewing the first 3 in the set,I decided it was time to watch the final offering in Arrow's Guitry set.
View on the film:
For the final title in the set Arrow present a solid transfer with a clean soundtrack and a good image,which does feature some wonky frames and spots of dirt. Finally freeing himself from his stage-bound style,lead actor/writer/ directing auteur Sacha Guitry reunites with cinematographer Jean Bachelet to greatly expand on the style he had shown in the opening of Let's Make a Dream,as Guitry and Bachelet chart the history of the Champs-Élysées with lavish panning shots that glide across the screen capturing the various eras.
Retaining the wit in his dialogue that had featured in all his stage adaptations, Guitry flourishes in matching this with comedic visuals, that flower with sight-gags and playful twirling camera moves glimpsing the various short-lived eras of the Champs-Élysées. Taking an anthology path, the screenplay by Guitry cleverly branches out his major theme of mortality in his work by the wraparound story by history teacher Guitry discussing the unique deaths of his various family members. Skipping across the dry presentation of his stage adaptations, the anthology format allows Guitry to hit a witty punch punch lines,and then turn to another story to keep the mood energetic across the history of the Champs-Élysées.
View on the film:
For the final title in the set Arrow present a solid transfer with a clean soundtrack and a good image,which does feature some wonky frames and spots of dirt. Finally freeing himself from his stage-bound style,lead actor/writer/ directing auteur Sacha Guitry reunites with cinematographer Jean Bachelet to greatly expand on the style he had shown in the opening of Let's Make a Dream,as Guitry and Bachelet chart the history of the Champs-Élysées with lavish panning shots that glide across the screen capturing the various eras.
Retaining the wit in his dialogue that had featured in all his stage adaptations, Guitry flourishes in matching this with comedic visuals, that flower with sight-gags and playful twirling camera moves glimpsing the various short-lived eras of the Champs-Élysées. Taking an anthology path, the screenplay by Guitry cleverly branches out his major theme of mortality in his work by the wraparound story by history teacher Guitry discussing the unique deaths of his various family members. Skipping across the dry presentation of his stage adaptations, the anthology format allows Guitry to hit a witty punch punch lines,and then turn to another story to keep the mood energetic across the history of the Champs-Élysées.
Things past in the style of things to come
wickest26 December 2009
After years of hearing many cinema buffs here in France putting Guitry down for the filmed-theater aspect of his first films and finding some of these films hard to sit through myself, I came across a quote from Mae West that Guitry's "Roman d'un tricheur" was one of her favorite films. So I decided to keep trying.
"Roman" was more inventive than the previous films, as if Guitry had taken his contemporaries' criticism to heart, but a bit predictable for 21st century expectations. Yet it was fascinating to see Guitry falling in love with the means of expression that cinema had to offer him after he had lambasted the medium when talkies first came out.
This exploration continued in "Les perles de la couronne" and now reach their pinnacle in "Remontons les Champs Elysées," truly his most beautiful black and white film. The framework of a teacher telling students about his fore-bearers through the evolution of Paris' most famous street foreshadows the tone of Cocteau's future personal interventions in some of his best films. The fact that Guitry the actor is a teacher here justifies his talkativeness, and perhaps this frees Guitry the director to glide, sweep and whirl the camera around the lovingly created sets-- at some point the viewer wonders if Ophuls had something to do with the filming. Jump cuts are employed with the same elegance that would highlight Goddard's work at the end of the century. All of this to serve a comic and dramatic structure where humanity outweighs a kind of patriotism that never degenerates into chauvinism. This is thanks to Guitry's affectionate criticism of the foibles of those who inhabit his country and create its evolution. One of his best films and one of the best films of all time.
"Roman" was more inventive than the previous films, as if Guitry had taken his contemporaries' criticism to heart, but a bit predictable for 21st century expectations. Yet it was fascinating to see Guitry falling in love with the means of expression that cinema had to offer him after he had lambasted the medium when talkies first came out.
This exploration continued in "Les perles de la couronne" and now reach their pinnacle in "Remontons les Champs Elysées," truly his most beautiful black and white film. The framework of a teacher telling students about his fore-bearers through the evolution of Paris' most famous street foreshadows the tone of Cocteau's future personal interventions in some of his best films. The fact that Guitry the actor is a teacher here justifies his talkativeness, and perhaps this frees Guitry the director to glide, sweep and whirl the camera around the lovingly created sets-- at some point the viewer wonders if Ophuls had something to do with the filming. Jump cuts are employed with the same elegance that would highlight Goddard's work at the end of the century. All of this to serve a comic and dramatic structure where humanity outweighs a kind of patriotism that never degenerates into chauvinism. This is thanks to Guitry's affectionate criticism of the foibles of those who inhabit his country and create its evolution. One of his best films and one of the best films of all time.
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