Country : France
Medium : Black and white
Duration : 117′
Video : René Chateau Vidéo – 1991
Production : Édouard Harispuru / CCFC
Scenario : Sacha Guitry
Screenplay : Sacha Guitry
Music : Adolphe Borchard
Director of photography : Jean Bachelet
Plot : From Marseilles where she met Napoleon to Stockholm where she became Queen, Désirée Clary wrote the pages of her extraordinary novel and followed the path of her destiny. The spectator watches fascinated at the irresistible rise of this petit bourgeois woman form the South of France along side the successes of her first fiancé Bonaparte and her husband Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. The film shows clearly that Bernadotte’s opposition to the Empire at every step was merely out of jealousy.
Cast : Jean-Louis Barrault (Bonaparte) ; Sacha Guitry (Napoleon) ; Gaby Morlay (Désirée Clary) ; Aimé Clariond (Joseph Bonaparte) ; Yvette Lebon (Julie Clary) ; Noël Roquevert (Fouché) ; Jacques Varennes (Bernadotte)
Extract : « Napoleon. – Yes, Bernadotte, you did everything you could to save the Republic. So you see that it was doomed. It wasn’t the Republic that you should have saved, my friend, it was France. It’s a very serious but common error to suppose that by saving the regime you save the nation. Being a Republican is merely a matter of opinion. »
Review : Despite some good lines and some well-played scenes, Guitry never gets beyond the conventional and there is a banality not to be seen in any other of his films. The performances are not very believable, particularly that by the author himself in the role of the Emperor. But the presence of soundtrack music very subtly placed at the very centre of the film, between the “Bonapartist” period and the epic “Napoleonic” period, shows well the author’s imagination and talent.