This is late Rene Clair but none the worse for that. The first thing you notice is the color; pastel to a fault so that even the bright red trousers of the dragoons seem somehow muted. There's an unreal quality about the whole thing so that the overall effect is like watching a marionette show under water. The next thing you notice is the toytown quality of the sets, reminiscent of the castle in Les Visiteurs du Soir, the whole town, interior and exterior looks as though it never needs sweeping or cleaning. The plot needn't detain us - the one about the babe magnet who either wagers himself or else his colleagues wager on his behalf that he can seduce (in the early 40s and The Fleet's In, the GI only had to KISS the girl to win the bet) a girl selected at random by a given date has been around since they were writing with papyrus - because it's Style not Content we've come to see and we don't go away frustrated. What we have here is one of the great beauties of French cinema - two if you want to stretch a point and include Gerard Philippe, who was about one generation ahead of Alain Delon in the Pretty Boys Who Can Also Act school - wearing exquisite clothes, smiling her exquisite smile (eat your heart out, Julia Roberts) and suffering as exquisitely as only Michele Morgan could. Against all the odds, plot one step up from total cliché, mannered acting, predictable outcome, etc, we keep on watching and more than that, watch it again and again. Let's face it, on a Clair day you can see forever.

I couldn't disagree more with the disappointed viewer. Maybe my Frenchness helps me put up with the "chauvinism" depicted in the film (lord knows I'm not into male chauvinists, but this film doesn't necessarily treat them well), the fact is I love it and this is one of my favourite films. Gérard Philipe is wonderful (his character isn't that bad - he is very good at pulling women and very charming, and besides none of this does him any good, he is unhappy in the end), Michèle Morgan has quite a few good lines, I like the music and the song (Magali Noël sings in the movie), and the supporting cast is grand. Sure, Le Million is a great film, but Les Grandes Manoeuvres is nothing René Clair should be ashamed of.

One shouldn't be dissuaded from seeing this film because of one disappointed viewer. It is a charming and beautifully crafted film, not often seen in the U.S., but well worth watching. It is very Gallic in its attitudes, which means that it has a certain amount of gallantry, chauvinism, sexism, and a plain, old-fashioned outlook on the sports of love, but it refuses to be pinned down to a formula, or to have a pat ending. I find it ever so much better than Clair's earlier work, and if you can shift your mental gears to the French way of thinking, it is a very rewarding, bittersweet film.

A womanizing soldier (circa WWI) makes a wager with his fellow soldiers that he will be able to seduce any woman chosen at random. The woman is chosen, he goes for it. You can probably guess most of the rest: he falls in love with her unexpectedly, she finds out about the wager, there is a question of whether they will ever truly get together, yada yada yada. Yes, it's that old plot. Perhaps Clair invented it, but I doubt it. It would later be used in every fourth movie ever made in the 1980s. I hoped that Clair could make it work. My favorite films of his are so effortlessly romantic that I expected him to be able to do it. Alas, he can't. This film lacks everything that made films like Le million charming and romantic. This one is cold and dull. I didn't like either of the leads. The man was completely despicable and the woman was frigid. Scenes move too quickly, and there is no feeling in them. The only bright spots are some nice cinematography (it was Clair's first film in color, and it looks as if the whole thing has been painted with watercolors) and a nice little supporting role by the enormously darling young Brigitte Bardot. 5/10.