Las noches cálidas de Lady Hamilton

Let's avoid any comparison with Sir Alexander Korda's "lady Hamilton" starring Dame Vivien Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier; Christian-Jaque's effort ,by no means , can 't hold its own against it.

Christian-Jaque ,who is dear to the French cine buff ,was a spent force in the sixties /seventies.It was not the first time he had directed Michèle Mercier (see also :"la seconde vérité" (1966)) ,and like him ,she already was a star on the decline :she would never get over her Angelique character and it ruined her career ever since the late sixties.

A has -been (who used to be a great director in the past) directing another has-been and what do you get? A comic strip ,where lovers appear and disappear at the speed of sound , plenty of bawdiness , a touch of lesbianism (Nadja Tiller is downright ridiculous as Marie-Caroline De Naples ); love scenes , rebellion riots , naval action,all edited in a way that flies in the face of common sense.The opening scene sets the tone: the heroine harassed by a farm hand,soon to be followed by the farmer himself soon to be followed by a painter who considers her a model ,soon to be followed by ..........

The scene when the heroine is having a speech lesson is a Bernard Shaw ("Pygmalion" "My fair lady" ) rip off .

Christian-Jaque should have remembered that Trafalgar , for his compatriots, was a scathing defeat.