It would be easy to dismiss this anti-war film as naive and fey, but personally, I've had enough of sweaty, macho war pictures, and this candy-coloured fairy-tale suits me fine, with its echoes or foretaste of Fellini, Demy, Lester, Altman and Kusturica. The assumption that the mad are really sane is slightly dubious, and some of the more 'significant' messages are heavy-handed, while this paradise seems suspiciously white. Better still are the set-pieces which seem to erupt spontaneously from the narrative, as the fruitful chaos of the mad is asserted over the murderous order of the real world; the giddy Lesteresque farce; and the complex, bleak, inversion of traditional fairy-tales, involving time, midnight, kings, princesses and knights

The lunatic asylum as a metaphor is not of course original and has been employed in films as diverse as The Balcony and Folle Embellie but this one has an added element of charm that works heavily in its favour. Initially it's hard to accept Adolfo Celli as a Scottish officer or indeed Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier much less an ornithologist but as soon as the French actors are rolled out (almost literally) it picks up and is off and running. Micheline Presle is particularly striking and at one level the film is worthy of her daughter, Tonie Marshall, a more than accomplished director, but all the inmates have their moments - indeed De Broca seems to have deliberately provided each one with his or her moment in the sun so that the film is at its strongest as an ensemble piece although Genvieve Bujold's chocolate box beauty tends to catch the eye whenever she appears. The plot has been dealt with elsewhere but just for the record it's kick-started by one of those World War One blunders that were obviously commonplace and seem funny now but probably less so at the time especially to those on the receiving end; ornithologist Bates is mistaken by his Colonel for an explosives expert and ordered to diffuse the bombs thought to have been planted by the Germans prior to evacuating the town (along with the residents). Nothing Bates can say can deter the Colonel from sending an unqualified man to do a job for which he lacks both training and expertise and the upshot is that Bates inadvertently releases the inmates of the local asylum who then with the logic of a dream assume the clothes and roles of the townspeople. There's a fine sense of colour in the costumes, possibly inspired by Minelli but essentially it achieves its effects by a charm offensive. Highly recommended.

I saw this at my college over thirty years ago, and remember it fondly. Made in the late 1960s, it became a hit with American audiences in the grips of our madness called "Vietnam".

British soldier Charles Pumpnick (Alan Bates) is ordered in a typical screw-up to go into a French village to defuse a large bomb left by the Germans. It is World War I, and the British are led by Col. MacBibbenbrook (Adolfo Celi) who is actually sending Pumpnick for a second reason: he wants to know if the Germans have actually left the town, so that his soldiers can "reoccupy" it. Given the tedious and murderous stalemate on the Western Front between the Allies and Central Powers in their trenches, any temporary regaining of land is a great victory.

The Germans are led by an officer as fully suspicious of the British as MacBibbenbrook is of them. So he decides to test the waters by pulling out most of the troops, leaving a trio to watch for the British turning up. Pumpnick, rather reluctantly, does pop up, and soon discovers that the French citizenry has long since fled the town in the wake of the massive warfare around it. The only people he find seem very eccentric types. They should be - they are the inmates of the local insane asylum, who were abandoned by the doctors and staff. They have now decided to take over their imagined roles in the new reality of the deserted village. Soon Pumpnick realizes this, but he soon finds himself protective of these lunatics. He also finds their gentle insanity has some real substance to it that moves him - much more than the intense insanity of the outside world does.

Other writers and artists have tackled the idea of the madmen running the asylum. A good example is Edgar Allen Poe, in his short story, "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather". But Philippe De Broca's film compares insanity in two forms, and finds the form we normally "punish" by incarceration in asylums to be far kinder than the larger one. None of the madmen and women of the asylum threaten or hurt Pumpnick (a point which shows this is a fantasy, as in real life they would have some dangerous types). The ones who we reward with rank and power are far more willing to send the Pumpnicks of the world into dangerous (if not deadly) situations.

The conclusion of the film is too well known for me to discuss. I will only say that when the more dangerous outside lunatics get rid of each other's threat, Pumpnick opts to stay on with his new friends. They will welcome him.

Aside from this I like to comment on more point. De Broca had a bit part where he shows that things on the outside can only get worse, when he shows up as Adolf Hitler briefly, delivering the German officer a message. Perhaps I should say the intensely bad situation will get even more intensely bad in twenty years time.