"The Pearls of the Crown" is a very frustrating movie to watch. It looks very nice--with lovely costumes, nice acting and some gorgeous sets. But, unfortunately, it comes across as a very bad history lesson--so jam-packed full of characters and events from the last five hundred years that it made my head reel--and I am a retired history teacher!

Sacha Guitry was quite the auteur here--co-writing, directing and starring (in several roles) in this film. He was a talented man and did some lovely films. This, unfortunately, is not a particularly good one. The film is the history of a set of perfectly matched very large pear-shaped pearls. These pearls pass through LOTS of hands and the film is sure to show each and every one in a long, long series of vignettes. The first one is very long and well done--the other 3722348 are all too brief and hit you like an out of control freight train! All this is strung together with a plot of a man (Guitry) and two others who are in search of these illusive pearls. Even more episodic than "The Story of Mankind"--this one NEVER engaged me and only got worse as the film progressed. A clear misfire.

By the way, get a load of the Abyssinian queen--she's some white lady covered in copious amounts of dark paint.

A delight! This is kind of the film I was hoping to see last year when I watched Guitry's Story of a Cheat, which I had heard about for years prior to its becoming available. I liked that film quite a bit, but there was a tinge of disappointment in that it didn't live up to my expectations. The Pearls of the Crown, though, was just brilliant. Guitry and his wife Jacqueline Delubac play multiple roles throughout a 400 year timespan. In the present they play a historian and his wife. Guitry is telling Delubac the story of the pearls in the crown of England. These pearls came from Mary Queen of Scots' necklace, which in turn came from a wedding gift to Catherine de Medici from the Pope. Guitry tells the story of the pearls' origin, and also of their theft the night Mary Stuart was executed. The four pearls that were recovered from the thieves went into the crown, and the three others were never found. Soon Guitry teams up with British and Italian counterparts and the three of them set out on a mission to find the remaining three pearls. This film moves back and forth through time with the grace of a ballerina. Arletty appears in one of the more outrageous bits of the film, as an Abyssinian queen (and, yes, she plays it in blackface).

With only two comments on IMDb (and only one external review) I feel duty bound to chime in with a third to say that this is one of the perpetually delightful gems of cinema. A unique film: playful, fascinating, extravagant, hilarious, touching. Guitry is written off time and again as a mere purveyor of filmed theater, and it's true that he made many films -- about half of his output -- from stage plays, often long after their original stage productions. But once he got the cinema bug (he resisted for a very long time, only starting make films in middle age) he found that he was given a wonderful new toy, and continued to play with it for the rest of his days. The enormous cast, the huge number of extravagant sets, the lavish costumes, and the vivacious imagination with which all these are employed make of this charming film something to be treasured. I've seen it now four times -- I try to save it for moments when I really want something wonderful to savor. And let me not forget the beautiful and equally lavish musical score of Jean Francaix. The DVD is quite good, but you will of course have to have a region-free player -- and if you don't, why not? Available at this time only as one of the eight discs in a magnificent box set (with many extras) from Gaumont France, "Sacha Guitry: L'age d'or 1936-1938." It's well worth the price.