Anti-war comedy that takes place in 1918 during World War 1 in France. Private Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) is sent to a small French town to dismantle a bomb that the Germans put there. Unknown to him the residents of the town have all left and the insane asylum has been left wide open. The inmates take over the town and Plumpick can't figure out why people are acting so strangely.This was ignored when it came out in 1966 but acquired a cult following soon after. The movies message is VERY anti-war and college students responded to it (the Vietnam war was in full swing when this came out). At one theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Central Square Theatre) it played for 5 YEARS with college students seeing it again and again. I was only a kid when this came out and didn't catch it until the 1980s when I was in college. Brattle Theatre (also in Cambridge) played it quite a bit with another college cult movie "Harold and Maude" and I saw it every time it played (which was quite often).While I don't disagree that the movie is simplistic and VERY dated I still loved it! The humor in this comes mostly from the antics of the inmates but also shows the German and British armies as being run by total idiots. The humor is not in your face--it's very gentle and sweet but works. The anti-war message is subtle but I think it's easy enough for anyone to get. The acting was good by the whole cast--especially Bates (his reactions to the antics of the inmates is priceless). Supposedly most of the people reviewing this who loved it saw it as children in the 1960s and have fond memories of it. Younger reviewers seem to hate it. Well I didn't see it till I was in college and loved it! Not for everybody but for those who like off beat foreign movies this will be a treat! I give it an 8.

My wife and I just finished watching this film on DVD (or I should say I finished watching, my wife bailed 20 minutes into it). We watch foreign films, we watch old movies, we watch indie movies, we watch a ton of movies.This movie came to me as a recommendation from a co-worker who is old enough to have served in the Vietnam war. I was born as that war came to an end.This film was okay. It might have been great in its day, but it holds up poorly now. Why? Well, there are other films I feel that have stood the test of time much better than "King of Hearts". Aside from Genevieve Bujold and Alan Bates, the rest of the cast are unknowns (even today). Alan Bates is supposed to be this great English actor, but I had not heard of him. I understand he does non-mainstream films, but still, he isn't that good. If he was, I would have heard of him. I know his contemporaries such as Peter Finch and James Mason.The film is droll, sure, but I felt detached, which is the worst thing a director can do to his audience. I want to be able to experience what the main character is feeling, but "King of Hearts" is so simple, and Alan Bates so one-dimensional, that in the end, there were just moments that were enjoyable. To me, this is a relatively forgettable film.The story was not complex or engrossing. A soldier is sent to disable a bomb in a town whose residents have fled. The residents of the insane asylum escape and become the town's residents. However, Alan Bates character knows they are from the asylum very quickly. He has dialogue with the patients, and there's an attempt to highlight that war is more insane than the mentally ill, and that the mentally ill are more humane and sane. Some other reviewer mention the theme of non-conformity, which I suppose was Alan Bates' character not being a part of the military in the end.This didn't mean much to me because I'd rather watch "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" which deals with mental illness more accurately, and non-conformity more poignantly. I'd rather watch "The Deer Hunter" or "Platoon" or "Born on the Fourth of July" or "Schindler's List" or "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Thin Red Line" or "Apocalypse Now" for the insanity of war. I get that "King of Hearts" is a light, gentle satire, but that also makes it boring in my book. As I said, I want more from a movie, and "King of Hearts" is just average--not bad, just average.As for the reviewer who suggested that the younger generations (which includes mine) isn't concerned with non-conformity, I have to say that in my observation, the people I know who have tried not to conform end up being even more conformist than those who accept that life is inescapably conformist. Alan Bates' character may not have decided to conform to the military, but he decided to conform to be a mental health patient in the end, which has its own set of rules. I'd rather watch "Into the Wild" for non-conformity, and wonder about the sanity of that character. It's far more interesting to me.In the end, it's all a matter of perspective and opinion and taste. I'm sure there are movies from the 1980's that have nostalgic value for me that do nothing for the generations younger than myself (or older than myself for that matter!) "King of Hearts" seems to have a place in baby-boomer's hearts.

One of greatest movies of all time, it is charming and sweet, funny and romantic. It is a unique film that at once captures the best of humanity and the folly of war. Set in a small town in World War I France, it has a crazy premise that works because the film is true to that premise to the very end. Everything about it is superb: the acting, the direction, the writing, the score, the cinematography. Alan Bates and Genevieve Bujold are perfectly cast in the lead, but the entire cast is great. The music is beautiful. The ending is brilliant.If you rent it, be sure you get the subtitled version. It is in three languages (French, English, German), and the dubbed version loses a lot.

I saw this at my college over thirty years ago, and remember it fondly. Made in the late 1960s, it became a hit with American audiences in the grips of our madness called "Vietnam". British soldier Charles Pumpnick (Alan Bates) is ordered in a typical screw-up to go into a French village to defuse a large bomb left by the Germans. It is World War I, and the British are led by Col. MacBibbenbrook (Adolfo Celi) who is actually sending Pumpnick for a second reason: he wants to know if the Germans have actually left the town, so that his soldiers can "reoccupy" it. Given the tedious and murderous stalemate on the Western Front between the Allies and Central Powers in their trenches, any temporary regaining of land is a great victory. The Germans are led by an officer as fully suspicious of the British as MacBibbenbrook is of them. So he decides to test the waters by pulling out most of the troops, leaving a trio to watch for the British turning up. Pumpnick, rather reluctantly, does pop up, and soon discovers that the French citizenry has long since fled the town in the wake of the massive warfare around it. The only people he find seem very eccentric types. They should be - they are the inmates of the local insane asylum, who were abandoned by the doctors and staff. They have now decided to take over their imagined roles in the new reality of the deserted village. Soon Pumpnick realizes this, but he soon finds himself protective of these lunatics. He also finds their gentle insanity has some real substance to it that moves him - much more than the intense insanity of the outside world does.Other writers and artists have tackled the idea of the madmen running the asylum. A good example is Edgar Allen Poe, in his short story, "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather". But Philippe De Broca's film compares insanity in two forms, and finds the form we normally "punish" by incarceration in asylums to be far kinder than the larger one. None of the madmen and women of the asylum threaten or hurt Pumpnick (a point which shows this is a fantasy, as in real life they would have some dangerous types). The ones who we reward with rank and power are far more willing to send the Pumpnicks of the world into dangerous (if not deadly) situations.The conclusion of the film is too well known for me to discuss. I will only say that when the more dangerous outside lunatics get rid of each other's threat, Pumpnick opts to stay on with his new friends. They will welcome him.Aside from this I like to comment on more point. De Broca had a bit part where he shows that things on the outside can only get worse, when he shows up as Adolf Hitler briefly, delivering the German officer a message. Perhaps I should say the intensely bad situation will get even more intensely bad in twenty years time.