Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)

What a beautiful movie!

Better Late Then Never

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Spoilers -- A lot of subtle humor mixed in with the serious dialogue, mostly sight gags, (which would make Sellers famous in the Pink Panthers). The general has a swordfight with the doctor, but the only weapon available to the doc is the umbrella, so he fights with that, and at one point even stops to show the general how to properly thrust & parry; When Leo rushes past a man on a bike, the bike flips upside down, spilling the food on the rider's face. As the general walks past the kitchen help, his hands keep making "involuntary" gestures. Ghislaine (French actress Dany Robin) goes wading, and a fisherman "catches" her dress right off her. Lady Fitzjohn (Margaret Leighton) gets on a bicycle and passes all the riders on horseback, hunched down like Margaret Hamilton in Wiz of Oz... and that car that keeps backfiring. The General never does get to fiddle with Ghislaine , but he sums it up himself by saying "we all have to grow up sometime." I liked it, even if it did get quite serious at the end. Fitzjohn and his wife finally talk about the reality of their relationship after all those years. When he almost kills her, he says "Thank God" when the doc says she will live (although he might just be relieved he won't be tried in an accidental death) I guess the moral is to be happy with your lot in life (his iffy marriage), and to make the most of opportunities that come along (he muffed both chances with Ghislaine). The last 20 minutes feel like a tacked-on ending; this could have easily ended much earlier... maybe where they stop quarreling in the castle, or when Fitzjohn finds out the wife will be OK. i don't usually dig period pieces, but this one held my interest - there was just enough humor and peter sellers to keep me watching.

To me, this seemed like a one-joke kind of film where the joke isn't all that funny to begin with--certainly not enough to sustain a film. Peter Sellers plays a horny old general who has just retired from the British army circa 1908 or so. Over the course of the film, you learn that not only does he hate his wife but can't keep his eyes off other women. An old flame returns and you think they might run off together, but only moments later he's chasing some other tart. That is pretty much the entire film. Peter does a nice job imitating this sexual libertine and rotten family man who constantly tells his daughters they are stupid and ugly. While I guess his cruelty is supposed to be funny, I didn't particularly care for it.The bottom line is that the acting is just fine, but the script is not. There just isn't enough to support a movie and my interest wained about mid-way through the film.

Forgive me again for being very uninformative and nitpicky. I'm unfamiliar with the play ("disastrously translated into English setting and characters" - Halliwell's) and I sure as hell can't discuss the author's oeuvre.The photography is beautiful, if not entirely consistently so. I especially liked it during one of the heavier scenes involving Sellers and "wife".There are some ugly flashback transitions."Fawlty"-heads will see a pre-Sybil Scales, if paying enough attention...... which can be relatively hard at times.One notices how the actor who plays the innkeeper (John Glyn-Jones, further investigation shows) carries an enormous resemblance to the fine actor Richard Jenkins of "Six Feet Under" fame (or of "The Man Who Wasn't There" fame). Then, in his second and final scene, what is called out through some galloping if not "Mr. Jenkins!" Bizarre.John Le Mesurier seems to have been always reliable (by which I mean the few of his I've seen).Sellers's "old man" voice arouses in me questions as to why he was constantly cast in these senior roles (here, flashbacks, yes). Don't get me wrong, though. His performance is as great as you can expect from him."I'm old enough to be your aunt." Well, you don't look like it.The titular sequence is actually memorable.The ending I liked, which seems to be a common thing with viewers.I have trouble understanding what this eventually is. One minute, there's some silly umbrella fencing, and the next, grave discussion about things marital in nature. I can't really grasp the whole film. That's right, blame my age. But it is all over the place.At any rate, the film is worth a go. I didn't get these "masterpiece" vibes that others have gotten out of it, but if not for anything else, it's worth seeing for Sellers doing his thing.

This is a wonderful little movie which displays Peter Sellers's acting genius both for comedy and serious drama. It is a haunting story of a general at the end of his career, about how much was real and not real in his life, and about his weaknesses and distractions. It is easy to project certain kinds of political observations on to this movie, as was done in an earlier review by wjfickling in his comment about the advantages that men have over women, but it is just as easy to project the opposite. The genius of the movie is that it tells a story of the bitter sweetness of a man's life that is outside the politcally correct "truth du jour" and can be taken directly, as it is.