Le capitaine Fracasse

The 1955-65 era was the French swashbuckler heyday and Jean Marais was the hero of that generation.He had given up his artistic ambitions of the Cocteau period ("la Belle et la Bete" " les parents terribles" ),but his panache and his charisma remained intact.Pierre Gaspard-Huit is not much of a director ,but it's adapted from a Theophile Gautier novel and there's a good cast featuring Louis de Funes and Gerard Barray (later,Duvernois in "abre los oyos")who was some Marais 's alter ego and who plays the villain here.The ending is melodramatic to a fault -but so was Gautier's novel-and anyway Marais's acrobatic feats (no stunt double,what contemporary actor can say the same?)are all that counts.