Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)

Directed by Bud Yorkin. Starring Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Jack MacGowran, Helen Fraser, Billie Whitelaw, Hugh Griffith, Victor Spinetti, Ewa Austin, Rosalind Knight, Orson Welles. [PG]

Goofy lampoon of stodgy costumers and aristocratic adventures from Hollywood’s Golden Age, with a particular nod to Alexandre Dumas adaptations. Wilder and Sutherland are two sets of identical twins separated at birth; one of the mismatched pairs ended up dim and cowardly in the French peasant class, the other was raised on wealth and privilege, and their lives become very complicated with revolution on the verge of sweeping the land. Spotty, but sometimes hysterically funny, especially when the haughty nincompoops are front and center. The material is more obvious than inspired, but the actors are up to the task, and the silliness is infectious—I can’t explain why the repeated utterance of “1789” during the scene transitions and establishing shots worked its magic on me, but it did, and an early scene with an apoplectic Wilder and his “inanimate” falcon left me in stitches. Orson Welles appears in the intro, then stays on only as the offscreen narrator (“Men of integrity…made a film…a color film, which I am not in”).

70/100