Review of Ridicule

This is a very fine movie clever and witty.If the morality of the French courtiers was the one that the film shows it to be then the Revolution did very well to destroy the Old Regime. The film is a good evocation of the epoch with lots of esprit and world-play but such callousness towards other people's problems deeply offended my moral sensibilities and made the character played superbly by Fanny Ardant, despite her beauty and wit, repugnant to me.

The same applies to the smart alec Abbe and the callous military officer. The central hero is a responsible and progressive fellow whom I liked very much as well his scientifically inclined fiancée.

The movie is about the clash of the mores of the courtiers and those seeking a more rationalistic order of things. I side with the second.

It is a splendid movie which displays the moral climate of the privileged of the privileged, that means according to sources the tiny portion of 4.000 presentees, that is the cream of the nobility which was 2% of the population anyhow.

How could the French people put up with such drones remains a mystery to me, there must be some historical explanation which eludes me, but this is a film, not a historical treatise.

As such it must be judged and it comes out very well.