Also known as "Carnival in Flanders", this French film by the Belgian director Jacques Feyder has been on my "must see" list for yonks. I had tickets for a showing at the NFT about a year and a half ago, but a family emergency prevented my going. Anyhow now I have a wonderfully crisp copy of this black and white masterpiece on DVD and for once it was worth the wait. Set in the early 17th Century, the citizens of a Flemish village are preparing for Carnival when word reaches them that the Spanish army is about to descend upon them. Scaring his councillors with graphically illustrated tales of rape and pillage, the Mayor decides that if he plays dead the army might respect the town's mourning and move on. No such luck. But with their cowardly menfolk in hiding, the village women work out their own methods for dealing with the handsome Spaniards.
It's truly a good-natured farce and the re-creation of the townscape and costumes of the period is brilliant. All of the cast are superb, but Louis Jouvet who I wrote about recently in my review of Renoir's "Lower Depths" is particularly memorable as a venal monk acting as chaplain to the Spanish Duke. I understand this film about appeasement fell out of favour when the area was invaded by less pleasant forces a few years later, but we can watch it now and enjoy every ribald moment.
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