Excellent, a Must See

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There is a segment within a scene almost ending the first act of "The Madwoman of Chaillot", that suggest the direction the story is going to take. While the fanciful old countess Aurelia (Katharine Hepburn) explains young Roderick (Richard Chamberlain) the joys of being alive, the visuals turn to a slightly hazy retrospection of her love life, in which Roderick is seen as her mustachioed lover Alphonse, and the waitress Irma (Nanette Newman), with whom Roderick will fall in love, is seen as Aurelia when she was younger. All this theatricality is followed by a brief scene that ends the act, in which Irma delivers a soliloquy about her growing love for Roderick. Then after a fascinating first hour in which the plot is so startlingly current, as act two starts, we enter the world of filmed theater and the movie hardly recovers. If "The Madwoman of Chaillot" is remembered with affection after it ends, it is because of its first part, in which a rich and ruthless self-made man who leads a group that includes a general, a Catholic priest, a broker and a communist commissar, joins a similarly cruel prospector whose plan is the creation of an enterprise to dig up oil in the middle of historical Paris. The prospector has sent his nephew Roderick to put a bomb in the Palais de Chaillot to kill a public officer who denies him permission to begin his oil operation. But when Roderick fails and the police believe he is going to commit suicide, he meets countess Aurelia, who hears about the plan and decides to solve it by herself. Then action slows down, everything is done in interiors and the situation is resolved in strange ways -- first with a metaphorical trial which is pure stage material, and then with a certainly weird "execution" of the villains. By 1969 director Bryan Forbes was riding the crest of his own international film wave and had a great cast, in which even John Gavin delivered a fine funny performance of an evil priest. Masina is a delight, Evans is wonderful, and Homolka, Leighton, Henreid, Boyer and Dauphin are as good as all the supporting players, while Hepburn tries hard with her teary eyes... I could not help thinking what this would have been with a French actress in the lead.

Every Civics class (are they still teaching Civics in our increasingly more ignorant society?) should watch this and write an essay on it (if they know what one is, or what a subject and predicate is). What a fantastic analogue to today's insane reality, where the news is owned by the corporate giants: Yul Bryneer does a great turn describing how 'sensible' this arrangement is. To see Yul Bryner laughing is a treat in itself, when you have visions of Yul the Outlaw dancing in your head. Of course his evil in this film is far more insidious than any "The Wild Ones" could have envisioned.The Ragpicker's soliloquy by Danny Kaye is sometimes pointed to as the highlight of his career, when he was trivialized as a song and dance man....much as Einstein's political views on the insanity of war were sublimated to his scientific contributions. To watch Margaret Leighton give way to the Ragpicker's depiction of how easily women can be bought (with 'sable and morals'). As the defense lawyer, he almost gets his clients off by describing how he gave to all tax-exempt charities, and built many hospitals for the children who ate the food he grew in his 234 farms. (This will remind you of George Bernard Shaw's lines in "The Countess", in which the Indian muses on the much overlooked fact that those great givers to charity --whose names are etched on hospital walls-- are the same corporate giants who owned the mills that put the patients IN the hospitals.) Of course, we the people are no longer taught the skill of analytical thinking, so we wave the flag and gladly sacrifice our children to the merchants of death via their minions, the Army recruiters. And of course, it's all about oil, just as this illegal immoral invasion of Iraq is. How timely this movie is. No wonder you can't find it in the video stores. No wonder you can't even find reviews of the movie in Leonard Whoever's Reviews Book or the Time-Out English Review Book but in Variety's 2000 Movie Guide. Too dangerous in a time of McCarthyism, of Salem witch trials, where the 1st Amendment is so easily discarded.Naturally, we have a minister, who admits to being involved in some anti-Semitic activities using an atrocious Southern accent. Each of the plotters-- the commissar, the broker, the doctor, the DeGaulle prime minister...all 'confess' to one another their nefarious doings in order to show their loyalty to one another. The fact that Katherine Hepburn gives each of them an 'exclusive contract' to the oil under her mansion in Paris....soon known by all....indicates (according to Yul) that they are all worthy of being business partners, each one totally derelict of the chains of morality.This is a movie you'll see again and again. See it once for the gorgeous scenes of Paris, a city I love. See it again to remind yourself that once there was a Camelot, once there was a citizenry who cared enough, who knew enough about the danger democracy is in within our country to revolt, courting injury from the police stooges. Of course those police didn't have pepper guns or 'non-lethal' stun guns that kill. (Even at a Red Sox over Yankees celebration, by a direct hit, not the political demonstration the guns were bought for).These great actors are topped by Katherine Hepburn..her welling eyes mirroring her emotions, her concern at killing these monsters, her sadness for her lost love (the ragpicker?) that drove her insane. Here's an example of "If you had fore knowledge of the evil Hitler would do to the world, would you have killed him?".Yul Bryner shows also that he was an actor, not just a movie star...but then what enervated these great actors: Charles Boyer, Dame Evans, Guiletta Massina, Margaret Leighton (Betty Davis' nemesis)? It was a labor of love by an international cast which understood the greed, the amorality, the savagery of our 'leaders'. I note that the previous comments also mirror the reviewers' political outlooks in their thumbs down approach: too much truth for them?If ever such a dramatization of our society's plight (also Britain's, by the way) is needed, it is the year 2005-- with amoral incompetence in the saddle of our Executive Cowboy and mirrored by the insipid cowardice or ineffectiveness of our Democrats in Congress. Although you won't find it for less than $69, it's well worth the money.

I was prepared by Maltin's comments not to expect very much, yet decided it would be interesting to see some star performers of the 1940s and 1950s in their relatively advanced age. I suppose did expect too much, since some first-rate actors, including the iconic Katherine Hepburn,my all time favorite, were submerged by a leaden script, which made them seem as though they were swimming against the tide in a river of mud. When I saw the original Broadway production, starring Martita Hunt, which as I recall took place exclusively in the madwoman's basement, I was taken by how delicately the author Giraudoux balanced a serious theme with the humor generated by a group of eccentrics and street people. The film takes the serious theme, beats it over the head until it becomes at the very least repetitive; with very few touches of humor, save perhaps the scenes in which the madwoman inveigles the conspirators to walk into her net, when a touch of the old Hepburn edginess appears. If you are looking to see some old favorites at career's end, DON'T; you will almost certainly be disappointed.

A delightful, gentle, quirky and poetic movie. The entire story takes place in the mind of the title character - an eccentric old dear who dreams of a world in which love is requited and evil is simply banished back into the darkness from which it came. The film is by turns moving, funny and magical - and the cast (especially Evans, Brynner, Homolka and Kaye) are a delight. If you are in the mood to be taken into a gentle, unfashionable, charming world of love, poetry and idealistic whimsy, then this movie is for you.