Pour don Carlos

Summary

Late-century Iberian light scorches the Pyrenean foothills where scarlet absolutism collides with republican steel; into this sulfurous crucible strides Allegria—ankles circled by cartridge-belts, laughter sharp enough to shred monarchist banners—whipping the scattered Carlist faithful into a last, quixotic frenzy for the fugitive Carlos VIII. Pierre Benoît’s scenario, filtered through Musidora’s subversive pen, choreographs a fever-dream of torch-lit processions, clandestine printing presses buried beneath bakeries, and love letters soaked in gun-oil. Henri Jullien’s lens lingers on the damp stone of Bilbao’s arcades while Henry Reynal’s pretender roams like a somnambulist king, haunted by the mirror of his own illegitimacy. Musidora herself, as Allegria, oscillates between vulpine seductress and revolutionary muse, her silhouette cut against moonlit wheat fields that ripple like molten gold. Secondary plots braid together: Abel Tarride’s republican commander torn between mercy and military necessity; René Carrère’s war-chronicler sketching corpses to understand life; child-bugler Ginette Chrysias racing through shellfire to deliver a blood-stained accord that will never reach Madrid. Guiraud-Rivière’s production design drapes chapels in baroque shadows, turning confessionals into clandestine arsenals, whereas Max Dhartigny’s rhythmic editing intercuts mass graves with carnival confetti, articulating history’s macabre carnival. The film climaxes on a mist-swathed dawn: Allegria, flag hoisted aloft, leads a final charge across a derelict railway bridge rigged with republican dynamite; an iris-in on her shattered smile questions whether revolutions birth liberty or merely new ghosts.

Synopsis

In late 19th century Spain, a civil war plays out in the Basque region between supporters of the pretender Carlos VIII and the republican government, with the feisty Allegria inspiring the Carlists.