ulicknormanowen

"Les lavandières du Portugal"s is a movie-of-the-song rather than the other way around;the song was a big hit in France in the late fifties ;as for the movie by Pierre-Gaspard Huit ('Christine" , in which Alain Delon and Romy Schneider met for the first time, another version of "le capitaine fracasse ' starring Jean Marais) it is a very light comedy in which two persons,working for "Floc" washing machine factory , vie with each other in finding a true Portuguese washerwoman and having her come to Paris to launch their precious machine .Jean-Claude Pascal and Anne Vernon have plenty of go and save something from the wreckage ;but there's not much to save .

Continuing a long tradition of movies dealing with the persecutions of the Christians in the Roman empire ,from De Mille's "sign of the cross" (1932) to Leroy's "quo vadis " (1951 ,already transferred to the screen in 1912) , not forgetting the numerous Italian peplums of the late fifties/early sixties , this movie revives a genre which was a little forgotten today.

Tha landscapes are splendid ,taking advantage of filming on location in Turkey , with accurate costumes and sets ,but the movie has a tendency to dwell on the sordid ; too much time is given over to horrible tortures -which may seem implausible - and the Christian message is simplistic, the lines are poorly written , the emperor is a villain cardboard ,and the hero himself , too inexpressive ,lacks charisma and it's hard to believe this man is transfigured by God;the computerized pictures of the fight with the dragon do not help.

The best scenes are these involving the mother who taught her son about the Christ message : here the simplicity conveys the conviction which is almost absent in the martyr/emperor scenes.

The final cast and credits are marred by a music which does not fit the subject at all.