'Cartouche' Ending Not So Bad After All

Well, I wasn't disappointed--as I'd been in the past.

The ending of Philippe de Broca's 1962 swashbuckler Cartouche, which I finally got around to revisiting last night, wasn't as bad as I'd remembered it. Sure, it was a downer, but it was sensitively handled. My only complaint this time around was that it seemed a bit abrupt.

As opposed to the rest of the film, which was a brawling, thrilling delight.

I wonder if the unhappy (though now that I think about it as an older man, somewhat fitting) ending has led in part to the film's relative anonymity in the United States. After all, we like our swashbucklers happy and peppy--adventures as comedies, where everybody who deserves to wins in the end.

It was not so with Cartouche. C'est dommage. This film deserves to be better known.