Event

THE KING OF HEARTS

Sunday, July 29 Bagel Brunch at 10am Film at 11am
Followed by Discussion with Fred Craden
$10 Members $15 Public

Philippe de Broca's gentle anti-war fable is one of the iconic movies of the 1960s.
Although the film was not a success when originally released, it went on to develop an
enormous cult following, playing in some theaters for over five years. Alan Bates stars as
bumbling Private Plumpick, a gentle young Scotsman who cares only for poetry and his
carrier pigeons. He is sent to a village in the beautiful French countryside during World War
I on a mission to detonate explosives set by the retreating German army. The village, soon to
be blown sky-high, has been abandoned by its residents in the face of oncoming combat.
Instead, the town is populated by the residents of a nearby insane asylum, whose keepers have fleda fact that escapes the innocent
soldier, who assumes these are the regular folks. Plumpick is declared "King of Hearts" by the lunatics and finds himself caught up in
their lives while trying to find and defuse the bomb. In the course of his adventure, he falls for a pretty young inmate and soon begins
to realize that the world of these so-called "mad" people might be far preferable to the "sane" societies that wage meaningless war on
each other. The amazing cast includes Jean-Claude Brialy, Geneviève Bujold, Adolfo Celi, Micheline Presle, and Michel Serrault.
(1966, France, 102 min., color, 35mm, in English & French with English subtitles)